s\>^ ^V\^x^\^ 




-N : ^^^^3^^ 







^^^^^M 


l^^pp^jv^^ 







ECCLESIOLOGY. 



NOTES 



ON 



ECCLESIOLOG\^ 



J 



■■: / BY 

T. E. PECK, D. D., LL. D., 

Professor in Union Theological Seminary. 




RICHMOND, VA. 

Presbyterian Committee of Publication. 

1892. 






Copyright 

BT 

James K. Hazen, Secretary, 
1892. 

1"»E Library 

OF Congress 

WASHINGTOI^ 



Printed by 
Whittet & Shepperson, 

ElCHMOi^D, Va. 



PREFATORY NOTE. 



The most of these ''Notes" were printed in 1880 by 
the students of Union Theological Seminary in Vir- 
ginia, exclusively for their own use. They are now 
published for the first time. About fifty pages have 
been added, the additional matter consisting of the 
expansion of the hints on ''Apostolical Succession" 
and of a short chapter on "The Deacon's Oflfice." 

THE AUTHOE. 



COiNTENTS. 

I. Introductory, ------ 7 

II. Terms and Deno^hnations, - - - - 10 

III. Definitions and Descriptions, - ' - - 13 

rV. Distinction of Church External and Internal, 16 

V. General Description of the Church Visible, - 20 

VI. Proofs of the Existence of a Church Visible, - 22 

VII. First Organization of the Church Visible, - 28 

VIII. Method of Perpetuating the Church Visible, - 34 

IX. The Initiating Seal, - - - - - 38 

X. Infant Members, ------ 42 

XI. The Notes or MaSiks of a True Church, - 47 

The Pretended Notes of Kome, - - - 51 

Apostolical Succession, ----- 51 

Is the Church of Kome a True Church of 

Christ? ------ 103 

XII. The Nature and Extent of Church Power, - 106 



6 Contents. 

XIII. The Po^YER Ecclesiastical Contrasted with 
THE Power Civil. Relation of the 

Church to the State, - - - 119 

XIV. Other Theories of Church and State, - - 156 

XV. Subject of Church Power. — 3Iateria in qua, 162 

XVI. Officers of the Church, - - - - 171 

XVII. Presbyteries — Congregational — '' Sessions," - 178 

XVIIL Presbyteries — Classical, Synodical, General, 185 

XIX. The Deacon's Office, ----- 197 



ECCLESIOLOGY. 



INTKODUCTOEY. 



The scientific theologians of Germany have arranged 
the cycle of sacred knowledge under five leading; cate- 
gories, viz. : 1, '' Theology^'' the science of God. 2, A.n- 
throjyology, the science of man in relation to God. 3, 
Soteriology, the science of salvation. 4, Ecclesiology, 
the science of the church. 5, EscJiatology, or the 
science of ''the last things." The term Theology, in 
this classification, you will notice, is used in a narrow 
sense for a particular branch of theology, commonly 
so-called ; and is concerned with discussions touching 
the Being and Personality of God, and embraces, as a 
sub-division, " Christology ,'' or the doctrine of the 
Person of Christ, the God-man. It includes also the 
doctrine concerning the creation and government of 
the world, and the doctrine of angels and daemons. 
(See Hagenbach's History of Doctrines ; Robinson on 
^he Church.) ''Anthropology^' or the science of man, 
treats of such questions as the origin of the soul, liberty 
and immortality, the fall, sin, &c. Soteriology, or the 
science of salvation, embraces, chiefly, the doctrines of 
redemption and atonement, justification, and, in 
'' ort, the priestly work of Christ in all its relations to 
jurse of the law, and to human guilt and condem- 
nation, and the w^ork of the Hoty Ghost. {Hageiibach 
ut Slip, cit,) 

Now, such a classification implies in the history of 
doctrine, these three things: 1, That Ecclesiology \^ a 
branch of theology in the wide sense. 2, That it 



8 ECCLESIOLOGY. 

comes* after the first three, in a natural or logical 
method. 3, That it comes after the first three in an 
historical order. 

(1), Ecclesiology belongs to theology. The doc- 
trine of the chnrch belongs to the things which haye 
been revealed of God, and are, therefore, objects of 
faith. Accordingly, we find this doctrine in the very 
earliest symbol of the Christian church, the '' Apostle's 
Creed," standing in the same relation to the " credo" 
as the other articles, and in the same order, with re- 
spect to the doctrines concerning the Father, the Son, 
and the Holy Ghost, w^hich we find in the classification 
we are considering. So also, in nearly all the larger 
creeds and confessions of a later date. The 25th 
chapter of our own '^ Confession of Faith," is entitled 
^' Of the Church." 

(2), The doctrine of the church, in a rational or lo- 
gical order, falls to be considered after theology, an- 
thropology, and soteriology, for the very obvious 
reason that the church is the great and last result con- 
templated by the revelation concerning God, man, and 
salvation. It is the highest end, next to the glory of 
God, of all the counsels and all the works of the 
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Chosen by the Father, 
redeemed by the Son, sanctified by the Spirit, and 
finally presented a '^ glorious church," without spot or 
wrinkle, or any such thing, the Bride, the Lamb's 
wife, shall be hailed by principalities and powers in 
heavenly places, as the highest and noblest displaj^ of 
the manifold wisdom of God (Eph. iii. 9, 10) ; as far 
transcending in glory the old creation, over w^hich the 
morning-stars sang together and all the sons of God 
shouted for joy, as the second Adam, who is a quick- 
ening Spirit, transcends in glory the first Adam, who 
was but a living soul. 

Meanwhile, during this dispensation of testimony 
and of trial, it is the office of the church, as the pillar 
and buttress of the truth, to bear witness of the great 



Intboductoky. 9 

truths wliicli are comprehended under the terms The- 
ology, Anthropology, and Soteriology. She is not 
only the object of the working of that Triune God of 
whom theology treats, and the subject of that sin and 
salvation of which anthropology and soteriology treat, 
but to her have been committed the lively oracles 
which alone determine the faith of mankind upon all 
these classes of truths, and through her are these 
truths to be published to the race. The contents of 
the message are to be pondered first, then the nature 
of the messenger. This is the rational order. 

(3), It is also the order of history. It is worthy of 
note that ^Hhe history of the church since the apostles 
seems to have been a development in succession of 
these four in their order. ^^ Theology " had its full de- 
velopment during the controversies concerning the 
nature of the Godhead, which closed with the labors of 
Athanasius; ''Anthropology," during the Pelagian con- 
troversy, closing with the labors of Augustine. Next, 
after a thousand years of repose and silence in the 
church, was developed Soteriology, through the labors 
of Luther and Calvin, proclaiming salvation as by grace 
through faith ; leaving the fourth (Ecclesiology) yet to 
be developed." {Robinson on the Church, pp. 27, 28.) 
This is certainly striking, though absolute accuracy 
would, perhaps, require the statement to be modified 
and limited. 

In harmony with this idea, that the development of 
Ecclesiology may be reserved for the last, perhaps our 
own times, is the fact that many of the most obtrusive 
tendencies of speculation, socialistic, political, philo- 
sophical, in the nineteenth century^appear in discus- 
sions about the principle oi fellowship, the principle 
upon which the church is constituted. I may instance 
'' Communism," '' St. Simonianism," &c., in social phil- 
osophy; the principles of ''sodality" and "solidarity," 
in political philosophy; and the principle of "catholi- 
city " used as the criterion of certitude in philosophy 



10 ECCLESIOLOGY. 

properly so-called. (See TrencJis Hulsean Led., VIII., 
p. 125; MorelVs PMlosoplmj of B^eligion ; Morell on 
Phil. Tendencies of the Age, L. 4tli.) Indeed, it is not 
unlikely that two of the three frog-like, unclean spirits 
which John tells ns (Eey. xvi. 13) proceed out of the 
months of the dragon, the beast, and the false prophet, 
"infidelity" and ''formalism," may form a coalition 
upon the principle of catholicity {quod semper, qnod 
vhique, quod ctb oranihus) for one final, desperate assault 
upon the church of God, (see Presh, Critic, Vol. I., 
p. 291-'2), envied, like Abel of old, for her possession 
of the absolute truth, certitude and assurance. 

However this may be, there can be no doubt that 
the question of the church is, in our day and in our 
own branch of the church, one of the most consj^icu- 
ous ; and there is little doubt that assertions are made 
in regard to the nature and functions of the church, in 
some of these discussions, which, if accepted and be- 
lieved, must be fatal to the soul. 

These facts constitute an ample vindication of the 
importance of the studies upon which we are about to 
enter as well as of the appropriateness of the place as- 
signed to them in the' Seminary Curriculum. 

II. 

Teems and Denominations. 

"Church." This word, and German lirche, Saxon 
circe, and Scotch kirk, are derived, probably, from the 
Greek xopcaxo^, or to xuptaxov, that which belongeth to 
the Lord. "x4ls a house of God is called a Basilica, 
i. e., regia a Pege, so also it is named Kijrica, i. e., 
Dominica a Domino ( xup^or:) " says an old author 
(quoted in Gieselers C. H., § I.) It appears from Ul- 
filas that, in general, the Greek names of Christian 
things were adopted among the Goths. The Greek 
origin of the word is confirmed also by its being found 
not only in all the German dialects, (Swedish kyrka, 



Teems and Denominations. 11 

Danish kirhe^ etc.,) but also in those of the Sclavonian 
nations who were converted by the Greeks (PoHsh 
cerkiew^ Russian herkow, Bohemian cyrkew,) (See note 
to the section in Gieseler ut sicpra.) 

" Synagogue." This word is used in the LXX. often, 
as well as in the New Testament. It is put for any 
kind of an assembly, whether sacred or civil (Exod. xii. 
3, 19 ; Num. xvi. 2), nay, even in a bad sense, for a pro- 
fane and impious assembly (Psa. xxvi. 5) ; sometimes 
for the place of meeting (Luke vii. 5), in which the 
Jews were accustomed to assemble to hear the law, 
offer prayers and perform other offices of devotion be- 
side those which were to be performed in the temple. 
Thence the so frequent mention of synagogues in the 
New Testament, the origin of which, according to some, 
was in the time of Moses (Acts xv. 21) ; according to 
others in the time of the captivity, when they were de- 
prived of the temple services. Hence, the '' synagogue " 
has come to denote the Jewish church, in like manner 
as ''the church" has been applied to the Christian 
church. 

''Ecclesia" is a Gentile, as synagogue is a Jewish, 
denomination i^Turrethi, Vol. TIL, pp. 7, 8). Hence, in 
the Epistle of James (ii. 2), which is addressed to Jew- 
ish Christians, the assembly of worshippers is called 
the synagogue; but the churches under the gospel 
being composed for the most part of Gentile converts, 
the term ecclesia is most commonly used {Turretin ut 
supra — Witsius, Exercit, Sac, in Symholwm^ xxiv. p. 451, 
Amstelod, 1697). 

The Greek exxXrjaca answers precisely to the kahal 
and gheda and -moid of the Old Testament, all these 
terms signifying an assernhly^ especially one convened 
by invitation or appointment. {Masons Essays on the 
Church, No.' 1, Works, Vol. IV. p. 3). " That this 
is their generic sense," says Dr. Mason, ''no scholar 
will deny; nor that their particular applications are 
ultimately resolvable into it. Hence it is evident, 



12 ECCLESIOLOGY. 

from the terms themselves, nothing can be concluded 
as to the nature or extent of the assembly which they 
denote. Whenever either of the two former occurs in 
the Old Testament, or the other in the new, you are 
sure of an assembly^ but of nothing more. What that 
assembly is, and whom it comprehends, you must learn 
from the connection of the term and the subject of the 
writer." A few instances will exemplify the remark : 

In the Old Testament, kahal^ is applied : To the 
whole mass of the people (Exod. xii. 6) ; to a portion 
of the people, who came upon Hezekiah's invitation to 
keep the passover (2 Chron. xxx. 24) ; to the army 
of Pharaoh (Ezek. xvii. 17) ; to an indefinite midtitude 
(Gen. xxviii. 3) ; to the society of Simeon and Levi 
(Gen. xlix. 6) So also gheda is applied : to the wJiole 
nation of Israel (Exod. xvi. 22) ; to the particular 
company of Korah, Dathan and Abiram (Num. xvi. 
16) ; to the assembly of the just, as opposed to the 
wicked (Psa. i. 5) ; to the judicatory, before whom 
crimes were tried (Num. xxxv. 12, 24, comp. with 
Deut. xix. 12, 17, 18). In like manner e/s/J:r^ata, in the 
New Testament, is applied : To the whole hody of the re- 
deemed (Eph. V. 24, 27) ; to the whole hody of professing 
Christians, whether more or less extensive, as in the 
apostolic salutations and inscriptions of the Epistles; 
to a small association of Christians meeting together 
in a private house (Col. iv. 15, Phil. i. 2) ; to a civil 
assembly lawfully convened (Acts xix. 39) ; to a bodj' 
of persons irregularly convened (Acts xix. 82). In ap- 
plication to the church, note the following meanings : 
1st, The church invisible. 2d, The church visible, in the 
sense of a single congregation worshipping statedly in 

*It is only this word whicli the LXX. render by ey.y.Xr^(yui ; though 
they sometimes nse ^ovayil'yri to represent it. In Psa. xxvi. 12 ; Ixviii. 
27, a cognate word in the plural is rendered by the plural of ecclesia. 
The three Hebrew words seem to be used indiscriminately in Num. x. 
1-7, still it may be a question whether the assembly of vs. 7 is the same 
as that of vs. 3, or rather with the select assembly of chiefs in vs. 4. 



Definitions and Descriptions. 13 

one place. 3rd, Separate congregations united under 
one goyernment, (Cliurcli of Jerusalem). 4th, The 
church visible, yaguel}' and indefinitely so called — the 
whole body of professing Christians, without reference 
to external organic unity (Confession of Faith, Chap. 
XXY. xlrt. I. ; compare ''Jews"). 5th. The church re- 
presentative, the church court. 

" Ila^Yrjoc-,'' (Heb. xii. 23) which has a significa- 
tion somewhat different from the ecclesia. AYhen the 
people among the Greeks were convoked for the pur- 
pose of deliberating and determining concerning matters 
pertaining to the republic, the assembly, as we have 
already noted, was called ecclesia. But when, as in 
the Panathen?ea, they were invited to some festive 
spectacle, then the assembly was called Uavrff')otz^ and 
an oration delivered on such an occasion was called 
IlavrjoprAo:; Aoyo^. An assembly of the faithful, there- 
fore, convened to act upon things pertaining to the 
kingdom of God, L e., spiritual and heavenly things, 
may be called ecclesia, but inasmuch as they are in- 
vited and admitted to the greatest spectacle in the uni- 
verse, the glory of God shining in the face of Jesus 
Christ, the assembly may be called r.ayrj'jmc (See 
^\^itsius ut Sup.) 

III. 

Definitions and Descriptions. 

The church may be defined, '' a society of faithful or 
believing men, called by God, through the word, out 
of the whole human race, to the communion of the 
covenant of grace in Christ." ( TTV/.v/z/.v ut sup., 24, 
sec. 6.) The different members of this definition must 
be explained in their order : 

1st. It is a society. This implies not only that the 
individuals composing it are many (1 Cor. x. 17); but 
as we are taught in this text, and in 1 Cor. xii. 11, many 
joined together organically, so as to make one hody. 



14 ECCLESIOLOGY. 

Society implies a commnnity of nature and of ends. 
Instance in the family and in the state, which, like the 
church, haye been instituted by God. The same is 
true, to a certain extent, eyen of yoluntary associations. 
The members are *' fellows," at least with respect to 
the ends for which the association is instituted. This 
idea of community of nature, feeling, interests, etc., is 
expressed emphatically in the common illustration 
drawn from the human body. (See 1 Cor xii. ; Eph. 
iy. 4, &c.) If one member suffers or rejoices, the other 
members suffer or rejoice with it. The functions dis- 
charged by one member are discharged for the good of 
all. Each is interested in all and all in each. The 
notion of a bodj', howeyer, implies also (see Eph. iv. 16) 
organization, a constitution of the parts or members in 
certain relations to each other and to the whole, and 
especially a common relation or union to a head, a 
directing power which shall giye unity to the operations 
of all the parts. Of the body, the church, Christ is 
the head. This yiew of the nature of society shows the 
absurdity of all theories of the church w^hich make 
connection with the charch the means of regeneration. 
This is equiyalent to saying that a man must become 
a member of society in order to be a human being; 
that the atmosphere creates the lungs, or that the light 
makes the eye. The truth is, that a man becomes a 
Christian and a member of the church at the same 
time by the same act of God ; but in the order of na- 
ture he must become a Christian first. 

The same idea of society is conveyed in other ima- 
ges of Scripture besides that of a body. For instance, 
the images of a tree (Rom. xi.), a fold under one shep- 
herd (John X.), a city or state (Phil. iii. 20, with Eph. 
ii. 19). See Potte/}' on Church Governmeat, Cha]:) I. ; 
Ma^oiiS Plea for Corn mum on ^ at the beginning. 

2d. It is a society of men. The angels are our fel- 
low-seryants (Rey. xix. 10), haying the same Master; 
they are children of the same great family (Job. i. 6 ; 



Definitions and Descriptions. 15 

xxxviii. 7), and partakers of the same blessedness, which 
consists in communion with God, Avhence Ave are said 
''to come to an innumerable company of angels" (Heb. 
xii. 22). Yet they are what they are in a different 
mode and by a different title, not redeemed by Christ, 
not called by the gospel, not born again of the Spirit, 
not partakers of the covenant of grace, which are the 
highest privileges of the church, and its characteristic 
marks. (See Heb. ii. 16). Witsius ut supra, 24, sec. 
6. 

3rd. It is a society of belie rmg men. As I have 
already stated in the course on History, the word and 
the life of the church constitute its form or formal 
nature; and faith is the first and most prominent 
exponent of the life. Now, faith cometh by hearing 
and hearing by the word of God. The word comes pro- 
miscuouslj^ to all, but is not believed by all. Faith makes 
the difference among them. The faithful have a new 
life. Faith is mixed with the word (Heb. iv. 2), and a 
Christian is the result, and the church is composed of 
Christians. The object of faith is substantially the 
same in all ages, and, therefore, faith is sulDstantially 
the same; and, therefore, the church is substantially 
the same in all ages. (See Acts ii. 41-47 ; Heb. iii. 5, 6 ; 
iv. 1, &c.) 

4th. It is a society of holy men. This is virtually 
included in the last, but deserves an articulate state- 
ment. (1 Peter ii. 9; 1 Cor. i. 2, and other inscrip- 
tions to the Epistles). (See Witsms ut sujj), 

5th. It is a society called of God (Gal. i. 6 et al). 
God is said to be the caller (Eom. ix. 11). Hence the 
church is the church of the living God (1 Tim. iii. 15). 
Hence the church is, in one sense, a voluntary society, 
and in another sense it is not. The call of God is a 
command, as well as an invitation to every man who 
hears it, to come out and be separate from the world 
which lies in wickedness. If he is destitute of faith, 
he is bound to seek it, and if he seek it not, he is lost. 



16 ECCLESIOLOGY. 

On the other hand, no man is coerced to become a 
member of the church. God makes his people willing 
in the day of his power. The zAYjToc are called sweetly 
as well as powerfully by the Spirit, enahled and jjer- 
suaded to receive Christ as he is offered to them in the 
gospel. As before man, the church is a voluntary so- 
ciety; for in the whole matter God has left the con- 
science free from the commandments of men. 

God is a sovereign in calling (Rom. ix. 11). Many 
are called but few are chosen (Matt. xx). This is im- 
plied in the very term '' Ecclesia." 

6th. It is a society called of God hy the loord. Hence 
where there is no w^ord, there is no church. (See 
under third head, " believing men ;" see 1 Cor. i. 21). 
This word is law and gospel. 

7th. The church is called out of the whole human 
race ; first, the Israelites (Psa. cxlvii. 19, 20) ; then the 
Gentiles (Isa. Iv. 5; Acts xv. 14.) 

8th. The end of this calling is communion with Christ 
in the covenant of grace (Prov. ix. 4, 5 ; Isa. Iv. 2, 3 ; 
1 Cor. i. 9 et al., 

9th. The church is one. This follows from all that 
has been said. 

IV. 

Distinction of Chubch External and Internal. 

It is to be noted, however, that there is a two-fold 
form, or if you prefer the expression, state and condi- 
tion of the church ; the one internal and mystical^ in 
which God alone judges Avith certainty concerning its 
members; the other external and visihle, in which man 
is also the judge. To refer to the definition of the 
church already given, we may note : 

1st. That there is a two-fold calling : the one external 
by the loord (Matt. xx. 16) ; the other hdernal^ by the 
Spirit (Rom. viii. 30). 

2d. A two-fold faith answering to this calling : the 
one coniinon^ found even in reprobates, by which, as- 



Distinctions of Church. 17 

senting to the truth of the gospel, they experience 
some transient joy (Acts viii. 13; Matt. xiii. 20, &g.; 
Mark yi. 20; Heb. yi. 4, etc.); the other saving, "the 
faith of God's elect" (Tit. i. 1), "faith unfeigned" (1 
Tim. i. 5), "faith working by loye " (Gal. y. 5). 

3d. A tico-fold holiness: the one relative, external, 
federal, consisting in the segregation from the com- 
munion of the impure and the profane (Ezra ix. 2). 
In this sense the Israelites are called "the holy seed." 
See also Eom. xi. 16. Such a holiness is recognized 
also in the New Testament. (See 1 Cor. yi. 1, 2 ; 1 
Cor. yii. 14). The other is absolute, internal, real, the 
property of those who are born again, a conformity to 
God and an image of his holiness (Psa. xciii. 5 ; 1 Pet. 
i. 15, 16). 

4th. A tivo-fold conmumion in. the covenant : the one 
external in the signs of the coyenant, belonging to the 
infant offspring of parents in the coyenant (Gen. xyii. 
7 ; Acts ii. 39), and to adults who make a credible pro- 
fession of^their faith, though they possess it not (John 
xy. 2, 6) ; the other, an internal, sjnritaal, saying com- 
munion in the things signified, such as remission of 
sins, the law written upon the heart, etc. (Heb. yiii. 
10-12). Compare the distinctions in Homans ii. 28, 
29, Avhich may be analogically transferred to Christi- 
anity. ( Witmcs, Ex, 24, § ll."^) 

Hence the two-fold form or condition of the church, 
the one visihle, depending upon the profession of faith 
and the obseiwance of worship ; the other spiritual and 
invisihle, which, owing its origin to the eternal election 
of God, reaches its consummation by a living faith and 
holiness. (See 1 John ii. 19.) 

With this distinction correspond yery nearly the 
definitions commonly giyen, and giyen in our Confes- 
sion of Faith, Chap. XXV.) 

The church invisihle is thus defined: See Sec. 1. — 
"The Church," &c. Note that the invisible church 
catholic, according to this definition, differs from the 



18 ECCLESIOLOGY. 

internal^ rayf<tical, sjnritiud church of which we have 
been speaking only in this, that it inckides all the elect 
of all ages, past and future, while the latter includes 
onl}^ those who at any given period are actually justi- 
fied and sanctified. (See the scriptural references in 
the Confession.) The invisible church catholic may be 
considered eithevv?iiver sally and ;^«^o/o'^, with respect to 
the whole multitude of the faithful which constitute it, 
of whatever time or place they may be; or pa/'ticula^rly 
and yMza/ispoc, and now, concerning that which reigns 
with Christ in heaven, and now concerning that which 
labors and sojourns in the world and is distributed in 
particular churches. (Tarretin, Sec. 7, Quest. 2, Lect. 
18, Vol. III. p. 9.) 

Note, that the church invisible is not j)/Y(rt^'eally 
recognized at all by the Church of Home ; they make 
a distinction between the church militant and the 
church triumphant. The church militant, which is 
also visible, is the Eoman Catholic, out of which there 
is no possibility of salvation. To this church they 
ascribe all the attributes of the true or invisible church, 
unity, catholicity, holiness, indefectibility, etc., and 
thus make merchandize of souls. The gTeat champion 
of Eome, in the sixteenth century, Bellarmine, thus de- 
fines the church (See Tarretin nt sap.) : " Coetitin honii- 
mun, ejusdeni Christianaejideiprofessione, et eorvndeni 
s<iCTainentoram coinmanione colligatuiR^ Sulj regiinine 
legitim ovum p)cisto7'it7ii, ae jytxcecijyue tinius Christi in 
terris vica7'ii, Pontificis liomani,'' — a definition not 
drawn from the Scriptures, but made to serve a turn. 

The church visible is thus defined in our Confession 
of Faith, Chap. XXV. Sec. 2: ''The Visible Church, 
&c." Tarretin gives a definition in some respects 
more complete, or at least more explicit. It is as 
follows (18, 2, 10, p. 10): "- Societas hominxiin p)^'(^^- 
conio evangelii vocatorani ad unius fidei professionern., 
eorundem sacrorain coininunionern, et ejasdera ordinis 
ohservationevi'' 



Distinctions of Church. 19 

Before I proceed to consider the contents of these 
definitions of the church visible, I will say a word on 
its relation to the. church invisible, in addition to what 
has already been said when considering the general 
doctrine of the church. This relation is suggested by 
the etymon of the term '' ecclesia,'' and is contained in 
the notion of a vocation, or rather an evocation {ex- 
xalerS), a calling out of the mass of the human race. 
Both are referred, the church visible and the church 
invisible, to the sovereign purpose of God ; of which 
the wdiole process of salvation is an evolution. That 
purpose was a purpose to save, "not merely myriads 
of men as individual ■men, but myriads of sinners as 
composing a mediatorial body, of wdiicli the Mediator 
shall be the. head; a mediatorial kingdom wdiose gov- 
ernment shall be on his shoulders forever; a church, 
the Lamb's bride, of which he shall be the husband, a 
bride whose beautiful portrait was graven upon the 
palms of his hands and whose walls were continually 
before him, when in the counsels of eternity he under- 
took her redemption. '' Christ did not undertake 
from eternity the office of a prophet merely, nor 
the office of a priest merely, but as the result of 
all and the reward of all, to found a conirnunity, to 
organize a goveviwient, and administer therein as a per- 
petual kingy {Robinson on the Church, pp. 38, 39, and 
Appendix to Discourses on Redemption, note to Dis. 
IV.) Now in the manifestation and fulfilment of this 
purpose in time, "the ideal sxAexroc of the covenant of 
redemption became the actual xIyjToc. Inasmuch as 
they are called by an external clesis of the Word, they 
are gathered in successive generations to constitute the 
ecclesia on earth. In as far as they are called also by 
the internal clesis of the Spirit, they are gathered to 
constitute the invisible ecclesia^ the full and complete 
actual of the eternal ideal. For whilst, indeed, the 
effectual call of the Spirit can alone fulfil the promise 
of the eternal covenant to Messiah, yet, as that call is 
2 



20 ECCLESIOLOGY. 

externallj^ through the word and the visible ordinances, 
the very process of calling and preparing the elect of 
God creates the visible church in the very image of 
the invisible, and it is in this visible body that the 
Mediator carries on his administration, works by his 
Spirit, etc., and it is by this body that he carries on his 
purposes of mercy toward a world lying in wickedness." 
{jRoImison, pp. 41, 42.) See also Iiohi/isons '' Dh 
couvf^es on Hedeinption, " pp. 455 et seq. 



s- 



General Description of the Church Visible. 

See the definitions given in No. IV. Many of the 
features of the visible church are common to it with 
the church invisible, and have been described in pre- 
ceding numbers. III., IV. It is a society, an organ- 
ized society, a society of men, a society called of God, 
a society called by the word, called out of the whole 
human race, a society subject to the authority of Christ 
as its head. 

The characteristic features of the church visible, 
those which make it visible, are, according to the defi- 
nitions : 

1st. A credible profession of faith and holiness, and 
not real faith and holiness, as the term of membership 
and communion on the part of adults. 

2d. The right of infants, children of such credible 
professors, to the initiating sign and seal of the cove- 
nant, recognizing them members of the church, in some- 
what the same manner as minors in civil society are 
members of the state. 

3d. Certain sacred rites and forms of worship, 
through which this credible profession is made, and 
the covenant state of infants recognized. 

4th. A certain '' order" or government, or system of 
discipline, in the hands of church officers, called of God 
and chosen by the people. 



General Description of the Church Visible. 21 

5tli. The possession and use of oracles, ministry, 
ordinances, for the ingathering of the elect a ad their 
sanctification ; in other words, for the completion of 
the mystical body of Christ, the church invisible. 
(See Confession of Faith, Chap. XXV., Sec. III.) Out 
of the church visible there is ''no ordinary possibility 
of salvation." [Ihid., Sec. II.) 

6th. Catholicity. I mention this as a distinctive 
feature of the church visible, although it belongs also 
to the church invisible, for the reason that the term 
catholic is used in several different senses : (1), In the 
widest sense, embracing all differences of places, times, 
persons, and states, and denoting the whole family of 
God, in heaven and earth, militant and triumphant, 
past, present, and future. In this sense it is properly 
applied only to the church invisible. (2), In a narrower 
sense, for the church under the gospel, in opposition 
to the church under the law ; and this in regard to 
places, persons, and times, {a), Places, Christian 
church no longer restricted to one place of worship. 
(John iv. 21, 23; 1 Tim. ii. 8.) Q)), Persons. Chris- 
tian church has no respect to differences of family, 
rank, nation, etc. Neither Jew nor Greek, male nor 
female, etc. (Kom. x. 12 ; Acts x. 35 ; Col. iii. 11 ; Apoc. 
V. 9.) (c), Times. The Christian church must continue 
till the consummation of the ages. In the sense thus 
explained, the term catholic is also applied to the 
whole church on earth, in opposition to ''particular 
churches," existing in certain places or at certain 
times. (3), In an abusive sense, as equivalent to 
^'orthodox.'' Commonly so used by the Fathers after 
Augustine, to denote a particular church which main- 
tained its communion with the church universal, and 
had not been separated from it by heresy or schism. 
Thus, the "Catholic church in Smyrna," "in Alexan- 
dria," etc. This use of the term seems to have become 
common during, and in consequence of, the discussions 
about the Montanists, Donatists, Novatians, and other 



22 ECCLESIOLOGY. 

catharic of early times. Unfortunately, however, 
catholicity was made to depend upon official succes- 
sion, instead of the succession of the truth ; and this 
stupendous error led, in the course of time, to Popery. 
(See on the word Catholic, Witshis, tit siip, xxiv. 20 ; 
Turretin, L. xviii., q. 6, Vol. III., p. 27, 28; Pearson 
on the Creeds Art. IX. ; Suicers Thesau. snh verb.) 

It is in the second of the senses above given that 
our Confession uses the word of the church visible. 
" All those throughout the world." 

7tli. Unity. Same remark about this term as the 
last. The true idea of unity in the church visible will 
be explained when we come to consider the Presbj^- 
terian system, in opposition to Popery and Indepen- 
dency. 

So much for the general features of the church 
visible. Man}^ of these Avill be described more fully 
hereafter, as they are connected with the proofs of the 
existence of such a church, and with the mode in which 
it is maintained and perpetuated. 

VI. 

Pkoofs or THE Existence of a ChupiCh Visible. 

1st. To say nothing of the dim traces of such a body 
in the garden of Eden, to be discerned in the skins 
with which our first parents were clothed, (implying 
that the animals slain had been slain in sacrifice, and 
that the form of public worship, by which ^profession 
of faith in the promise of God was made, had been 
already instituted) ; nor to insist upon the clearer traces 
of it in the history of Cain and Abel ; {jniblic toorship 
and 2)rofessio)i of faitJi, Gen. iv. 4, with Heb. xi. 4; 
— stated times of worship, vs. 3, "at the end of days ;" 
— a stated jf^/ci^c'^, marked by some insignia of God's 
presence, a foreshadowing of the tabernacle and the 
temple, vs. 16, and compare 14, ''from thy face shall I 
be hid;" exconirnunication, vs. 14, compare with vs. 12, 



Proofs of the Existence of a Church Visible. 23 

16 — rqyostasy from a religwns profession, vs. 16) ; nor 
upon the additional trace of such a bodj^ in the times 
of Enos, when ''men began to call themselves by the 
name of the Lord," Gen. iv. 26 — or, as it is explained 
afterwards in the history, vi. 2, ''sons of God," in op- 
position, probably, to the apostate posterity of Cain, 
who w^ere called "sons of men," or, as we say, "men of 
the world," — see Gen. iv. 17, 19, 22, and compare Psa. 
xvii. 14 ; iv. 6 ; nor again in the times of Noah (w^hen, 
in consequence of the intermarriage of the "sons of 
God" with the " daughters of men," or the members of 
the true church with apostates — see Gen vi. 1, etc., and 
compare Num. xxv. 1, <tc. ; Ezra. ix. 2, Neh. xiii. 26, 
27 ; universal apostasy was the result) ; nor upon the 
manifest tracks of a patriarchal church, before the 
covenant of circumcision with Abraham, (see the his- 
tory, specially the account of Melchisedek, Gen. xiv. 
18, &c. ; Heb. vii.) ; not to insist upon any of these, 
the visible church becomes conspicuous from the time 
of the ecclesiastical covenant with Abraham, down 
through the w^hole history of his descendants in the 
line of Jacob, to the advent of the Messiah. This 
church, or "kahal Jehovah," embraced all who had the 
token of the covenant in their flesh, whether regener- 
ated or not, whether in or out of Judea (Acts ii. 5). 
Now, if such a church existed before the advent of 
Messiah — a church founded upon faith (or the credible 
profession thereof), in the promise of salvation, with 
solemn ordinances of worship, by which that profession 
was made and constantly renewed ; a church embrac- 
ing the infant offspring of such professors, and possess- 
ing a sign and seal by which this status of infants 
was recognized ; a church with a government and dis- 
cipline in the hands of men appointed of God, and in 
general with a ministry, oracles and ordinances, for the 
edification of the true worshippers ; a church, too, as 
will appear hereafter, catholic in its constitution and 
design, though not so in fact to any great extent under 



24 ECCLESIOLOGY. 

the law ; if such a church existed then, what has became 
of it ? Its ceremonial form has been abolished, but it 
has not ceased to be the church on that account, any 
more than the creature in its chrysalis condition ceases 
to be when it passes into the higher and freer sphere 
of the gorgeous butterfly. Nor does it cease to be be- 
cause the people who pre-eminently enjoyed its privi- 
leges at first have been deprived of them ; any more 
than the olive tree has ceased to be because the 
natural branches have been broken off and wild ones 
have been grafted in. He who denies the existence of 
a visible church since the advent of Christ, is bound 
to show that the church before Christ has been abol- 
ished, both in law and fact. (See Mason, Vol. IV., 
pp. 5-8 ; Essay I.) 

2d. '' The Old Testament scriptures proceed on the 
supposition that the visible church state, co-extensive 
with the Redeemer's kingdom on earth, was not to cease 
at the introduction of the gospel dispensation." {Mason 
ut sup., p. 8, (fee.) 

(1), There are numerous predictions concerning the 
church, and numerous promises to her in her public 
capacity, which are still unfulfilled, and can never be 
fulfilled, if her visible unity be not asserted. See 
Isa. Ixvi. 12, 22 ; xlix. 23 ; Ix. 3, 5. Now, upon the 
principle that ''God is not the God of the dead, but 
of the living" (Matt, xxii.), the church must continue 
to exist in order to receive the fulfilment of these 
promises. {Mason, IV., p. 8, (fee.) 

(2), The nature of many of these promises implies 
that the narrow ceremonial trammels by which it was 
confined should be done away. The promises, there- 
fore, imply at once perpetuity and change, and con- 
sequently, that the change is not inconsistent, much 
less incompatible, with perpetuity. 

Note {(t) that these promises contemplate the church 
as one; {b) that this unity is not ascribed to her as 
composed of the elect alone. The church is not rep- 



Proofs of the Existence of a Church Visible. 25 

resented as consisting of a multitude of independent 
associations, bnt as a great icJiole ; and further, as a 
visible body, her ''light" visible, the ''brightness of 
her rising" attracting the "kings," etc. (See also Isa. 
liv. 1, 2, for a description implying the same thing.) 

Note the difference between the nmtij and the one- 
ness (or oneliness) of the church. The papists indentify 
them; the Protestants predicate umty of the church 
inA'isible; oneness of the church visible. See Litton 
ChuTch of Christ, p. 1, chap. 1, sec. 1, (American 
Edition, pp. 268, ft'.) for this unity, p. 1, chap. 1, sec. 
2, pp. 335, ff.) for the oneness. It is in this last sense 
that Mason here calls the church one. 

3rd. "The language of the New Testament implies 
that an external visible church state was not abolished 
with the law of Moses." {Mason, IV., 11, etc.) 

"The writers of the New Testament never go about 
to ])rove that there is a visible church catholic ; 
far less do they speak of it as originating in the evan- 
gelical dispensation ; but they assume its existence as 
a point which no Christian in their days ever thought 
of disputing." The doctrine of the one visible church 
is interwoven with the texture of their language. 
(Acts vii. 38: ii. 47; viii. 3 : 1 Cor. xii. 28, <tc. ; Eom. 
xvi. 23; 1 Cor. x. 32; xv. 9, <fcc., etc.) The church to 
w^hich the Lord added daily such as should be saved, 
was not the body of the elect, for no addition can be 
made to them ; nor a single congregation, unless God 
had no more people to be saved in Jerusalem than, 
together with mere professors, were sufficient for one 
pastoral charge. Nor is it to be imagined that Saul 
confined his persecutions to a single congregation, nor 
that he was able to pick out the elect. Nor will a 
sober man allege that God has set no officers but in 
one congregation, or that they have no functions to- 
w^ard any but His elect ; or that all whom He hath set 
are themselves of the number; nor yet that "oftence " 
can never be given to any but the elect," ... " The 



26 ECCLESIOLOGY. 

phrases referred to (in tlie above cited passages) being 
utterly inapplicable eitlier to a single congregation, or 
to the body of the redeemed; must designate another 
and different society, which can be no other than what 
we have called the visible church catholic. Too ex- 
tensive for partial assemblies, too notorious for any 
secret* election of men, and yet a church — tlie church — 
it is general^ external^ and l3ut one." 

The phraseology of the New" Testament on this sub- 
ject, as on many others, is borrowed from that of the 
old. '^Ecclesia" is the same as "kalial," and the 
Seventy constantly use the former to render the latter. 
The Jews, then, would understand by '^ ecclesia Theou," 
the " kahal Jehovah." The Gentiles Avould (the Greeks, 
I mean), understand ''ecclesia" by itself, but would 
know nothing of ''ecclesia Theou" without looking 
into the Jewish scriptures, the Old Testament. The 
word "church" is like the word "Christ" in this re- 
spect. " Neither the nature of the church, nor the 
office of her head, is to be understood without an ap- 
peal to the same scriptures. Consequently that very 
rule which expounds the " Christ of God" as signifying 
one who was qualified by the Father's appointment 
and by the measureless communication of the divine 
Spirit to be a Saviour for men, will oblige us to ex- 
pound the "church of God" as signifying that great 
visible society which professes his name. (See Mason, 
pp. 14-17.) 

4tli. "The account which the New Testament gives 
of the church confirms the doctrine of the visible 
unity." (21asori ut sujrra, p. 17, etc.) 

(1), One of the commonest appellations is " the king- 
dom of heaven:" one, because the, not a, kingdom. The 
parable of the "wheat and tares" teaches that it is visi- 
ble as well as one. (Here read pp. 18, etc., in proof 
that the parable designates the church, and not civil 
society). So also the parable of the "net" and the 
"virgins." These parables of course cannot describe 



Pkoofs of the Existence of a Church Visible. 27. 

the body of the elect ; and it would be absurd to limit 
them to a single congregation. Ergo, &g. 

(2), The image of a ''body" in 1 Cor. xii. It plainly 
signifies a whole. Then what whole? Not the church 
at Corinth, far less a particular congregation, unless 
the commission of the apostles and the use of all spir- 
itual gifts extend no furtl^r. Not the church of the 
elect, for there are no ''schisms" in that body as such. 
Nor can it be affirmed, but at the expense of all fact and 
consistency, that God hath set no officers except in the 
church of His redeemed. For upon that supposition 
no church officer could ever exercise his office toward 
any non-elected man ; the pastoral relation could never 
be fixed without knowing beforehand who are the elect 
of God, or else no person, however blasphemous and 
abominable, could be kept out of a church,* because 
such "blasphemer" and "injurious" maj^ possibly be a 
" chosen vessel." The body, then, here described, must 
be the visible church catholic. (See Masoa ut sujrra.) 

It may be further noted that this body is represented, 
here and in Eph. iv., as endowed with sundry gifts, 
means of salvation and edification, "ministry, oracles 
and ordinances." These means of salvation are eMer- 
nal and visible ; a visible Bible, a visible ministry, visi- 
ble worship, sacraments, discipline, etc. ; and if the 
church and the ordinances committed to her are not 
of opposite natures, the fact that the ordinances have 
a solid external existence is proof that the church has 
also. Indeed, if the New Testament church is not the 
same great society which God formerly erected for the 
praise of His glory, and to which he committed the 
ancient oracles (Eom. iii. 2), then these oracles form 
no part of the trust committed to the church of the New 
Testament, and belong not to the rule of her faith, 
which is contrary to the whole drift of Scripture teach- 
ing in regard to the relation between the Old and New 
Testaments. [3Iason, ut siipra.) 

Finally, the general principle of the church visible 



28 ECCLESIOLOGY. 

is so inseparable from tlie Christian style and doc- 
trine, that its most strenuous opposers are uncon- 
sciously admitting it every hour of their lives. They 
talk habitually of the ''church," the ''faith of the 
church," the " worship of the church," "God's dealings 
with his church," and a thousand things of like im- 
port; and they mean by '^church," in such phrases, 
something different from "the elect," and from a "par- 
ticular " congregation ;" and that something, if they wdll 
analize it, will turn out to be the visible church catholic, 
or the " aggregate body of those who profess the true 
religion, all making up one society, of which the Bible is 
the statute-book, Jesus Christ the head, and a covenant 
relation the uniting bond. {Mawn^ p. 26.) 

YII. 

First Organization of the Church Visible. 

I noticed at the beginning of No. YI. tlie traces of 
the church in the times before Abraham. But, until 
the time of the father of the faithful, it cannot be said 
to have been formally organized upon the principle of 
visible unity. Until Abraham's time no separation had 
been made between the family and the church (as there 
had been virtually between the church and the state) ; 
y^6>?rtiie line is drawn within the family itself, part be- 
ing in the church, and part out of it. The account of 
this organization is to be looked for among the trans- 
actions of that memorable period which elapsed be- 
tween the call of xlbraham in Ur of the Chaldees, and 
the birth of Isaac. On the first of these occasions Je- 
hovah gave him a double promise: (1), A numerous 
progeny and great personal prosperitj^ (Gen. xii. 2, 3). 
(2). That he should be the medium of conveying ex- 
tensive blessings to the world (vs. 3). And to these 
promises may be referred all the communications 
which God subsequently made to him. Called up at 
diflferent times, explained, expounded and confirmed, 



First Organization of the Church Visible. 29 

each one of them became the basis of an appropriate 
covenant. 

1st. The first promise is repeated (Gen. xii. 7), 
with an engagement to bestow upon the progeny of 
Abraham the land of Canaan, which was afterwards 
(xiii. 14-17) confirmed in the most ample terms. And 
again, in the declining years of Abraham, the Lord 
came to him in a vision, and having cheered him with 
this gracious assurance, ''I am thy shield, and thy ex- 
ceeding great reward," (xv. 1) ; the promise was re- 
newed and solemnly ratified as a covenant (vs. 8-21). 
The promise of a posterity having been thns sealed, 
never occurs again by itself. 

2d. Fourteen j^ears after the date of this event, God 
appeared again to Abraham, and made another covenant 
with him. I should prefer to say that there were tv:o 
stages of the covenant^ rather than tvjo covenants : one 
stage in which Abraham appears as the mere recipient 
of the promise, rather than as a party (Gen. xv.) ; the 
other in which he appears as a party (Gen. xvii.) It is 
recorded in Gen. xvii. 1-14 (which read). What was 
this covenant? Not a covenant, either of works or 
grace, for eternal life. For Abraham had been "justi- 
fied by faith without the works of the law," and had 
been interested in the covenant of God's grace before 
this. His eternal life had been secured many years. 
Nor was it merely a personal or domestic covenant. 
This, too, had been concluded long before, as has 
been shown. It recognizes, indeed, all that was in- 
cluded in the personal covenant, which it might other- 
wise be supposed to supersede ; but it has features of 
its own, so peculiar, that it cannot be considered in 
any other light than that of a distinct engagement. For, 
besides the solemnity with Avhich it was introduced, 
and which would hardly have preceded a mere repeti- 
tion of former grants, it contained new matter ; it con- 
stituted 7ieiv relations and was affirmed in an extraor- 
dinary manner, (See Mccson, page 33, et seq.) (1), JS'eio 



30 ECCLESIOLOGY. 

Matter-. ^'Father of many nations," meaning not at all 
tliat he should be a literal father of many nations, but 
that he should be the means of blessing to all the fami- 
lies of the earth, in such a manner as to become what 
no other man, in the sense of the covenant, ever did 
or ever can become. (See Kom. iv. 13-17 ; Gal. iii. 7, 
8, 9, 29.) He should be the father of a spiritual seed, 
as well as the father, according to the other covenant 
(xv., see above) of a natiiral. Gal. iii. 6, 7, shows that 
the covenant in Gen. xv. was not a promise as to the 
" natural seed " only. Indeed, the frequent reference to 
Gen. XV. 6 by Paul, in proof of justification by faith 
alone, without works, shows that the covenant described 
in that chapter was a covenant for spiritual blessings ; 
and this confirms the view that there were not two 
covenants, but two stages of the same covenant. (See 
p. 29). (2), Neio relations : ^' To be a God unto thee, and 
to thy seed after thee." Whatever relation is here ex- 
pressed, it grew out of the covenant. 

It could not be, therefore, Abraham's relation to God 
as the God of his salvation, for in that sense God was 
his God long before. It embraced his seed, too, and 
God did not now engage to be their God with respect 
to eternal life, for all that was settled in the covenant 
of grace, and the privilege could not reach beyond 
those who were the actual partakers of the same pre- 
cious faith with Abraham. Whereas, in the sense of 
this covenant, God was the God of all Abraham's seed, 
without exception, under the limitations which re- 
stricted the covenant operation, first to Isaac and after- 
wards to Jacob, including such as should choose their 
God, their faith, and their society. For he was to be 
their God in their generations^ i. e., as soon as a new in- 
dividual of this seed was generated, he was within the 
covenant, and, according to the tenor of it, God was his 
God. We conclude then, that the covenant with Abra- 
ham and his seed contemplated them, not primarily 
nor immediately as of the election of grace, but as an 



First Organization of the Church Visible. 31 

aggregate which it severed from the bulk of mankind, 
and placed in a social character under peculiar rela- 
tions to the '' most high God." 

To define precisely the nature of this correspondence 
we must go a step further, and ascertain who are meant 
by the ^'seed." It cannot be the carnal descendants of 
Abraham exclusively, for (a), three large branches of 
that seed were actually shut out of the covenant, i. e., 
the children of Ishmael, Esau and Keturah. (b), The 
covenant provided for the admission of others who 
never belonged to that seed. See Gen. xvii. 12: ^^Not 
of thy seed." This principle was also acted upon un- 
der the law of Moses, when the seed of Abraham had 
become a nation. Ex. xii. 48, for the stranger's right 
to the passover. See also Deut. xxiii. 7, 8, Avhere the 
Egyptian, descending from Ham, is put on the same 
footing with the Edomite, descending from Abraham, 
(c), Abraham was to be the father of many nations ; 
'Hhe many nations" being equivalent to ''all the fami- 
lies of the earth," in one form of the promise. (Comp. 
Kom. iv. with Gal. iii.) These '' many nations" were 
the " seed" of him who was their '' father :" the seed in 
the same sense in which he was the ''father." But the 
covenant was with Abraham and his seed; therefore, 
these " many nations" were included in the cove- 
nant. 

3d. This covenant was affirmed in an extraordinary 
manner, viz. : by the rite of circmncision. The uses of 
this rite were two : (1), It certified to the seed of 
Abraham, that the covenant with their great progenitor 
was in force ; that they were entitled to all the benefits 
immediately derived from it. (2), It was a seal of ''the 
righteousness, etc. (Rom. iv. 11), and as such certi- 
fied ; (^/), that Abraham w^as justified by faith; (5), 
that the doctrine and the privilege of the righteousness 
of faith were to be perpetuated among his seed by the 
operation of God's covenant with him ; and, therefore, 
that all who helieved were children of Abraham, and 



32 ECCLESIOLOGY. 

personally interested in the righteousness by which he 
was justified. 

II. This covenant never has been annulled. See the 
argument in the third of Galatians, where the apostle 
shows, (1), that the Sinaitic covenant did not and could 
not annul it; and (2), that it was still in force, so that 
all who believed were Abraham's children or seed, and 
heirs of the promise, (vs. 29). But more particularly, 
it is to be noted, that according to Paul : 1st, The 
promise that Abraham should be the father of many 
nations could not be fufiUed until the Gentiles were 
brought in, or until the Christian dispensation. (Comp. 
Kom. iv.) The '' promise" upon which his argument 
turns is, ''I will be a God unto thee, and to thy seed 
after thee." The Abrahamic covenant, therefore, is 
still in force. (Comp. Heb. viii. 6-13.) 2d, If not, then 
the visible chuvch^ under the gospel^ is not in covenant 
with God ; and if no covenant, no promises ; if no pro- 
mises, then the Christian church is worse oft* than the 
Levitical. See Isa. lix. 20-22, which is a prediction of 
New Testament times, but it has no meaning if there 
is no covenant with the Christian visible church. 
(Comp. Rom. xi. 26, where the apostle represents the 
fulfilment of the promise as still future.) But the 
promise, by its very terms, is given to the church, ^4n 
covenant ;" her members, in constant succession, are 
the " seed" out of whose mouth the Spirit shall not de- 
part; and when the Jews are restored, they will be 
brought into this very covenanted church, and be again 
recognized as a part of the seed. 3d, In arguing the 
rejection of the Jews, and their future restoration, and 
the vocation of the Gentiles, the apostle reasons upon 
false principles, if the Abrahamic covenant has ended. 
(See Eom. xi. 17-24). 

Add the following : Acts ii. 38, 39, where note the 
following points. 

1st. The sameness of the form {See Introductory 
Lecture on History) of the church. ''The promise is 



FiKST Oeganization of the Church Visible. 33 

unto you," &g. It matters not whether this promise be 
that of the Messiah or the Spirit, for thej^ go together, 
and one is nothing without the other. The revelation 
of salvation, upon which the church is organized, is 
then the same under the law and under the gospel. 

2d. The constituents of the church are the same, 
believers and their children. 

3d. The differences in the church, under the two 
dispensations, are these: (1), Under the gospel the 
requirements for church communion are more spiritual 
than under the law ('^repent"), and imply a larger 
gift of the Holy Ghost — (''ye shall receive the gift of 
the Holy Ghost.") (2), The initiatory seal is changed: 
''baptism," instead of circumcision. (3), The church 
is more catholic under the gospel, "to all that are afar 
off," (tc. Some of these points will be considered more 
fully hereafter. See also Acts iii. 25, 26. 

Note the mistake which was made by the Pharisees 
who came to John the Baptist (Matt, iii.), and wdiich 
John removes so effectually in verse 9th, that the 
Abrahamic covenant and the Sinaitic were the same ; 
and, therefore, that until the Abrahamic covenant ex- 
pired, the Jews could not be cast off. See and com- 
pare Gal. iii., with Heb. viii. 6-13, and Acts iii. 22-26). 
Paul, as well as John the Baptist, evidently taught that 
the Abrahamic covenant might survive the casting off 
of the Jews. 

In the foregoing account of the nature of the cove- 
nant with Abraham, it wdll be seen that the community 
organized upon it possessed the three elements which 
are essential to the constitution of such a body. These 
elements, according to Whately {Essays on the King- 
dom of Christ, Es. 2), are officers, rules, and penalties 
by which the rules are enforced: (a). Officers; the 
church being at first "a church in the house;" all offi- 
cial authority was lodged in the head of the house. 
(5), Eules; obedience to God's commandments, and 
faith in his promise — both signified by the sign of cir- 



34 ECCLESIOLOGY. 

ciimcision. (c), Penalties ; expulsion or excommuni- 
cation. The officers under the Sinaitic covenant were 
priests and Levites ; but there can be no doubt that 
the patriarchal or family church continued, even un- 
der the outward Levitical ; and at a later period (after 
the captivity) became more prominent than the Leviti- 
cal form. In this the elders were the officers; and in- 
deed, circumcision and the passover were eminently 
fainily institutions. And the church, after the coming 
of Christ, emerges once more as a church, under the 
government of elders. The object of faith and the 
moral law were the same in all the stages. The penalty 
of excommunication was also the same. The visible 
community was the same, therefore, through all changes 
of dispensation. And the definition of this community 
is the definition of the visible church. The church that 
now is, therefore, was organized in the family of Abra- 
ham. 

YIII. 

Method of Perpetuating the Church Visible. 

The next question that claims our attention is the 
mode in which the visible church is perpetuated, or 
its privileges, the privileges of the Abrahamic cov- 
enant, transmitted. How is a succession of the '*seed" 
preserved ? The definitiongiven of the visible church, 
indicates that this is done in two ways : 1st, By a 
credible profession of the true religion ; 2d, By heredi- 
itary descent. Of these in their order. 

1st. Under all the dispensations of the church, the 
individual who was without the bounds of the covenant 
previous to his being of adult age, was to be admitted 
on \\Y^ personal faith in that religion which the cove- 
nant was intended to secure. [Mason, No. III. p. 47.; 
Till then he was to be considered an ''alien," ''for- 
eigner," "stranger." Upon this point there is a gen- 
eral agreement. But as to what is implied in this per- 
sonal faith there is no small diversity of views. 



Method of Perpetuating the Church Visible. 35 

(1), Some contend (as for example John Locke, in 
his Reasoiiahleness of Christianity), 'Hhat all that is 
necessary is a general profession of the truth ; under 
the gospel a general profession of belief that Jesus is 
the Christ, the Son of God." But this is the sum of 
the gospel; and an intelligent reception of this proposi- 
tion as the object of faith involves a reception of the 
whole testimony of God. See 1 Cor. xii. 3, in which 
passage it would be, in the last degree, absurd to say 
that the meaning is, '' no man can pronounce the words, 
Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost." See also, 
1 John V. 1, 5. Andifthis could not be the meaning then, 
when Christianity was a ncAv thing among the heathen, 
much less would it do now, when Christianity is learned 
by rote by millions of children. 

(2), Others think that a fuller profession of faith in 
the doctrine of revelation should be required, without 
solicitude as to the question whether these doctrines 
have been felt in their saving, transforming power. 
This seems to be the principle acted upon in some 
branches of the Presbyterian Church, in which persons 
of fair moral character, who can answer the questions 
in the catechism, are admitted to the Lord's table — 
herein differing from other churches (which they ac- 
cuse of popery), only in demanding more knowledge. 
It is a sufficient answer to this view to say, that it di- 
vorces truth from that Avdiich is its great end, godliness. 
Hence we find in such churches an unusually large 
proportion of orthodox wicked men, or at least of 
orthodox men, who show no spiritualit3^ We must 
never forget that a bad life is a bad, if not ''the worst," 
heresy. 

(3), Others again reverse the opinion of the last, and 
make the profession to be one of '' experience," and 
not at all, or very little of faith in the doctrines of 
God's word. I have myself seen persons join the 
Methodist Episcopal Church on probation, as they call 
it, simply by giving their hand to the minister, and 



36 ECCLESIOLOGY. 

nothing was said or done by which any man could tell 
whether the neophytes were Christians or Mahomme- 
dans as to their faith. The presumption, of course, was 
that they professed faith in Christ, but it was only a 
presumption. All which is absurd, because a man 
cannot be a Christian without some knowledge of 
Christ, (See John vi. 45 ; xvi. 7-15 ; even babes 
must know something. Matt. xi. 25-27) ; for he cannot 
be a Christian unless he has been taught by the Spirit, 
who witnesses of Christ. The church is the great wit- 
ness bearer the pillar and ground, or buttress, of the 
truth, and knowledge is indispensable. A profession 
of faith must include the following things. (See Mason, 
p. 53.) (a), Acquaintance with, at least, the leading 
doctrines of revelation, (h), Some evidence of the 
saving power of these doctrines upon the heart. (<?), 
An open, unequivocal avowal of the Redeemer's name ; 
and (<:?), vigilance in the discharge of religious and 
moral duty. [Mason, p. 53.) And all these particu- 
lars are implied in an adult being baptized into the 
name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. 
Further, it must be noted that the profession of faith 
upon which a person is admitted to church privileges, 
is a credible profession. The visible church, because 
it is visible, and its affairs administered by men, 
through visible ordinances, can insist upon nothing 
more than a profession which seems to be true and sin- 
cere. It is God's prerogative to judge the heart. And 
even our Lord Jesus Christ, who knew what was in 
man, and knew that Judas Iscariot was a devil from 
the beginning, admitted him not only to the fellowship 
of the church, but even to the office of an apostle, be- 
cause he would have been adjudged to be qualified for 
church membership and office by the measures of 
human judgment. The doctrine, therefore, of Mon- 
tanism, Donatism, Anabaptism, etc., in regard to a 
church which shall consist only of the regenerate, is a 
dream. It is false, both in law and fact ; the principle 



Method of PERPETUATiNa the Church Visible. 37 

upon which the judgment of the church is founded in 
this case, is the piinciple upon which every association 
of men must proceed in judging of the qualification of 
its members. The judgment must be founded upon 
what appears, not upon what is, A profession of faith 
in Christ, then, which is not discredited by other traits 
of character, entitles an adult to the privileges of his 
church. This is the first way of securing a succession 
of the covenanted seed, and of handing down these 
blessings to the end of time. {Mason, as above.) 

2d. The other and the principal channel of trans- 
mission is that of hereditary descent. The relations and 
benefits of the covenant are the birthright of every 
child born of parents who are themselves of the seed — 
''I will establish my covenant between me and thee, and 
thy seed after thee, in their generations, for an ever- 
lasting covenant." This is a characteristic of every pub- 
lic covenant which God has made with man. Take for 
example the covenant with Adam and with Noah. Every 
human creature comes into being under the full oper- 
ation of both these covenants. In virtue of the one he is 
an " heir of wrath," and in virtue of the other, an heir 
of promise to the whole extent of the covenanted 
mercy. He has the faithfulness of God pledged to 
him, as one of Noah's covenanted seed, that the world 
shall not be drowned by^ a second deluge, nor visited 
by another calamity to exterminate his race. Now no 
imaginable reason can be assigned Avhy, in the cove- 
nant with his visible church, the uniform and consis- 
tent God should depart from his known rule of dispen- 
sation, and violate all the natural and moral analogies 
of his works and his government. It cannot be. 
There is no such violation ; there is no such departure. 
{3fas(rn p. 58, and read on to the end of the chapter.) 



S8 ECCLESIOLOGY. 



IX. 

The Initiating Seal. 

We haye seen that the Abrahamic covenant had 
such a seal; that it was the '' seal of the righteousness 
of faith" ; that it certified that the Hebrew, to whom 
it was applied when he was eight days old, belonged 
to the church of God, and was entitled to all the privi- 
leges which it derived from that covenant. And fur- 
ther, that the right to this seal belonged not only to 
the literal, but to the covenanted seed, as is clear from 
the provision made for the circumcision of those who 
were "not" of the literal "seed" of Abraham. (Gen. 
xvii. 12, 13.) Now this covenant is still in force, as 
has been proved ; and if the rite of circumcision had 
not been abrogated, it would still be the duty of pro- 
fessing parents to apply it to their male offspring. 
But circumcision has been laid aside. Has the seal 
which it conveyed been abolished also ? If so, then 
it follows, (1), That there is no longer any initiatorj^ 
seal for either adults or infants, for an abolished seal 
is abolished. (2), That the church of God is under 
the operation of a covenant which has no initiating 
seal. If it be said that baptism is such a seal, then it 
follows that baptism has come in the place of circum- 
cision ; and if so, then God has a visible church, in 
sealed covenant with himself, distinct from that church 
which is composed of the elect only ; and as he has never 
made a new visible church, nor drawn back from his 
old engagements, that church must be the one which 
was organized by the Abrahamic covenant; and then 
it follows, further, that the application of circumcision 
must furnish the rule for the application of baptism, 
and infants are to be baptized. [Mason, pp. 64, 65.) 

In circumcision, and indeed in any ordinance, we 
must distinguish between the substance and the form. 
The substance of the ordinance, that which properly 



The Initiating Seal. 39 

constituted the seal^ was the certification to the per- 
son sealed of his interest in God's covenant. The rite 
of circumcision was no more than ^^ form in which 
the seal was applied. The rite may be, and was, and 
is yet performed without any sealing whatever. The 
sons of Ishmael, the modern Jews, are examples. On 
the other hand, the certification might have been the 
same and the rite different — the perforation of an ear 
or the amputation of a toe, etc. It cannot be argued, 
therefore, that because the ancient form is laid aside, 
that the seal and all that it certifies have been laid 
aside too. It would be quite as just to infer that be- 
cause the form of church polity is altered the church no 
longer exists. If it be said that the rite and the seal, 
though distinguishable, are in fact inseparable, and 
that the latter cannot be applied except through the 
medium of the former, the answer is, that the objection 
concludes equally against the existence of a church on 
earth. In truth, it is a fundamental principle that 
forms of dispensation do not affect the substance of the 
things dispensed. The covenant of grace has been 
dispensed under five forms,^' the Abrahamic covenant 
under tliree^ and yet neither has been abolished. 
Therefore, the change in the form of the seal does not 
abolish it. But as circumcision has been abolished, 
and no one pretends that any other rite has taken its 
place than baptism, either baptism is that seal, or 
there is no initiating seal at all under the gospel. If 
there is no seal, then the privileges of believers are 
abridged, instead of enlarged, under the gospel, and in 
this respect the gospel covenant is not what the 
apostle affirms it to be—'' a better covenant founded 

*1, Adam to Noah; 2, Noah to Abraham ; 3, Abraham to Moses; 4, 
Moses to Christ ; 5, Christ to the end. But as No. 2 is essentially the 
same as No. 1 (the Noachian covenant or covenant of ' ' forbearance, " 
embracing so far as it was singular, the whole human race, and there- 
fore not "the covenant of grace,"), there have been only/6»izr forms 
of the '-covenant of grace." 1, Catholic; 2 and 3, Particularistic; 4, 
Catholic. 



40 , ECCLESIOLOGY. 

upon better promises." Baptism, then, is. the substi- 
tute for circumcision. 

This may be argued further, (a), From the coinci- 
dence in the purpose and meaning of the two ordi- 
nances. They both put a mark upon their subjects as 
belonging to that society which God hath set apart for 
himself. Both signify and seal that w^ondrous change 
in the state of the sinner W' hereby, being justified by 
faith, he passes from condemnation into acceptance 
with God (Eom. iv. 11 ; vi. 3, (fee. ; Acts ii. 38 ; Col. ii. 
11-14), w^hich doctrines of pardon and acceptance are 
exhibited in that society alone which, under the name 
of his church, God hath consecrated to himself, and of 
which he hath appointed the circumcised and the bap- 
tized to be esteemed members. Both represent and 
are means of obtaining that real purity which is effected 
by the Spirit of Christ, and is the characteristic of all 
those members of his church who are justified by faith 
in his blood. (Deut. x. 16 ; xxx. 6 ; Acts vii. 51 ; Rom. 
vi. 4; Col. ii. 11-14.) They answer, then, the same 
ends ; baptism being better suited to the Christian dis- 
pensation as being capable of more extensive apphca- 
tion. (b), From the scriptural manner of representing 
circumcision and baptism where they are spoken of 
together, or where baptism is mentioned in connection 
with the covenant of w4iich circumcision was the seal. 
For one example see Acts ii. 38, 39. For another take 
the passage in Col. ii. 11-14, above cited. In which 
note, (1), That both baptism and circumcision are 
represented as signs of sjjiritual mercies. It is for 
this reason alone that they are or can be used as tenns 
to convey the idea of such mercies. (2), Circumcision 
was a sign of regeneration and of communion with 
Christ as the fountain of spiritual life. The apostle is 
treating of a believer's completeness in Christ. And 
in order to show that he means the inward grace, he 
calls it the circurrtcision made witlioiit hands, and to 
make all mistake impossible, explains his explanation 



The Initiating Seal. . 41 

by adding tlie ''putting off the sins of the flesh hy the 
circiimcision of Christ^ (3), Baptism, too, is a sign of 
regeneration and of communion with Christ as the 
fountain of spiritual hfe. In baptism, Paul says the 
believer is buried with Christ, and risen with him 
through a divine faith. The ''uncircumcision of the 
flesh" is a state of unregeneracy. Here, then, again, 
circumcision and baptism are employed by turns to 
denote the same thing — a believer's sanctification by 
union with Christ. He identifies the two ordinances 
as the same seal under different forms. But the two 
forms cannot exist at the same time, and circumcision 
has passed away. Therefore, baptism remains as the 
''circumcision of Christ," or Christian circumcision, 
and is expressly so called by Paul, as will be seen by 
comparing the last clause of verse 11 with the first of 
verse 12. Compare Rom. iv. 11, 12, where Abraham 
is called not only the "father of all them that believe," 
but the ''father of circumcision" to them, i. e., he com- 
municates the sign and seal as well as the thing signi- 
fied. Now^, if it had been said that he was the "father 
of circumcision" to the circumcision only, it would 
mean that the form of the seal, as well as the seal itself, 
had been handed down by Abraham to his descendants 
with the things signified. But he is represented, also, 
as the father of circumcision to the uncircumcised ; to 
those who walk in the steps of the faith which he had 
while yet uncircumcised; i. e., these last receive the 
seal as well as the covenant. But circumcision has 
been abolished. How, then, is Abraham the " father of 
circumcision" to the uncircumcised? Through bap- 
tism, which has come in the place of circumcision 
{Mason), and as there is no distinction between the 
mode in which Abraham has handed down the sealed 
privileges of God's covenant to those who were and 
those who were not of the circumcision ; and as they 
were made over to the former and their infant seed, 
they must also be made over to the latter and their in- 



42 . ECCLESIOLOGY. 

fant seed. If it should be said that the baptism of in- 
fants iinphes the apphcation of the seal of the right- 
eousness of faith to multitudes who never had and never 
will have that righteousness, and consequently that the 
seal of God's covenant is often affixed to a lie, the 
answer is that the same difficulty lies against circum- 
cision of infants not only, but against the adminis- 
tration of baptism and the Lord's supper to adults, 
unless we can be assured that all the recipients are 
true converts. But the difficulty is created by false 
notions of the church, and confounding the covenant 
of grace with the ecclesiological covenant. The seal 
of God's covenant does, in every instance, certify abso- 
lute truth, whether it be applied to a believer or an 
unbeliever, to the elect or to the reprobate. [Mason, 
p. 83.) 

Infant Members. 

According to the definition of the visible church in 
our Confession of Faith, the children of those who pro- 
fess the true religion are members of it as well as their 
parents. This has been already proved, (a). From the 
fact that the Abrabamic covenant, which included the 
seed, was an ecclesiological covenant, and has never 
been abrogated; and consequently that the Christian 
church, which is founded on the Abrahamic covenant, 
must include the infant seed of believers, (h), From 
the fact that all the public covenants made with men 
before Christ — Adam's, Noah's, the Mosaic — recog- 
nized the unity of the family and the identity of the 
federal status of parents and children, (c). From the 
fact that baptism has come in the place of circum- 
cision, (d), From the recognition of the same princi- 
ple in the whole course of God's providential govern- 
ment. When we are asked, therefore, for a ''Thus 
saith the Lord" for infant baptism under the New 



Infant Members. 43 

Testament, we answer, where lias God, in the New 
Testament, taken away from his people a privilege 
which they had always enjoyed? The burden of proof 
lies on them who deny, not on those who aflfirm. But 
we proceed to some considerations which tend to con- 
firm the right of the infants of professors to church 
privileges under the gospel. 

1st. If they have no such right, then God has not 
only departed from the analogies of former federal con- 
stitutions, and from the general analogies of his provi- 
dence, but has done so to abridge the privileges of 
his people under the new and better covenant. And 
when we consider that the children of believing parents 
share in all the disaster's of the visible church, its cor- 
ruptions, its persecutions, its declensions, the suppo- 
sition becomes monstrous that they are excluded from 
its privileges. It represents God not only as discrim- 
inating against his people by debarring them from a 
privilege, but as retaining the principle only for the 
infliction of calamity. (Mason^ p. 93.) 

2d. If there be no infant membership under the 
gospel, then the church has no authority over the chil- 
dren of believers, but they are to her as Turks or 
Pagans. She has no authority to instruct or admonish 
them, any more than the children of Pagans. If she 
had acted upon this principle she would long ago have 
ceased to exist. Baptists themselves do not act upon 
it. They feel, in spite of their own doctrine, that the 
children of the church do sustain a peculiar relation to 
it, and that the church is bound in a special manner to 
look after their instruction. At the same time, it must 
be acknowledged that they are more remiss in this duty 
than sects which formally recognize the ecclesiastical 
status of the children of the church. 

3d. If there be no infant membership in the Chris- 
tian church, then God has inflicted upon helieving Jews 
the very curse which he threatened against the unbe- 
lieving, so far as the children are concerned. (See Acts 
4 



44 ECCLESIOLOGY. 

iii. 23.) AVho are the '' people" in this passage? Not 
the nation of the Jews ; for they were the rebels that 
were to perish '' from among the people," a people who 
were to continue in the divine protection. Not the 
elect; for God never '' cast awaj^ his people whom he 
foreknew," and they who committed this crime never 
belonged to the elect — were never '^ among " them. If 
neither the Jewish nation nor the elect, it could be no 
other than that people whom he owns as his, and who 
are called by the collective name of his cJiiirch. And 
the passage occurring in -Moses is a proof of the unit}' 
and perpetuity of the visible church. What is meant 
by *' destruction" here? Not temporal death; for 
that penalty was never ordained for the sin of unbelief 
in the Messiah. Not an exclusion from the Jewish 
nation, for this effect did not take place ; and further, 
if it had, it was as likely to prove a blessing as a curse. 
It must mean exclusion from the communion of the 
visible church. This is its technical sense in the Old 
Testament. Now the execution of this threatening 
involved the casting out of the children of those on 
whom it was executed, and conversely the preservation 
in the church of the children of those who believed. 
If the converse does not hold good, then the children 
of believers were cast out, and then the threatening 
was executed upon believers as well as upon the re- 
bellious. If the Jewish Christians had understood the 
apostles in this waj', it is impossible to believe that 
they would not have made trouble about it. As to the 
spirit of the Jewish Christians, witness the commotions 
about circumcision as recorded in the Acts and con- 
stantly referred to in some of the Epistles. The Juda- 
izing teachers made circumcision not only a term of 
communion, but of salvation ; and if their doctrine had 
prevailed, circumcision in the Christian church must 
have been regulated by the Mosaic law, and this law^ 
prescribed the circumcision of infants. The only pre- 
text upon which a compliance with this ordinance 



Infant Membees. 45 

according to tlie law of Moses was binding upon the 
Gentile converts, was that the children of these con- 
verts were members of the Christian church. If they 
were not, the answer would have been easy. Whatever 
may be the duty of adnlts, there is no reason to cir- 
cumcise infants, because, by the new order of things, 
they do not belong to the Christian community and 
have no concern with its "sealing ordinances." Yet 
no such exception was ever taken. (See Acts, xxi. 21.) 

4th. If there be no infant membership in the Chris- 
tian church it is hard to accc^int for the language of 
God's word respecting children. (See Isa. Ixv. 23; 
Mark x. 14; Acts ii. 39; Eom. xi. 23, 24, etal) 

5tli. The supposition of infant membership is neces- 
sary to give any plausible interpretation of 1 Cor. vii. 
14. ''Holy" here cannot mean internal purity, for 
that children of professing parents are holy in this 
sense is contrary to reason, to scripture and to fact. 
It cannot mean " legitimate," for marriage is an insti- 
tution existing from the beginning, and altogether inde- 
pendent of Christianity. It must mean separated and 
set apart to the service of God. (Lev. xx. 26.) • This 
is evident from the contrast of ''unclean" — common. 
Compare Acts x. 14. The terms '^ holy " and " unclean " 
or " common," were precisely the terms for those who 
were, or were not, respectively within the external 
covenant of God, and were, therefore, precisely the 
terms to express the relation of infants to the church 
visible, according as they were or were not the off- 
spring of parents who were, one or both, members of 
the church visible. The only plausible objection to 
this view is, that if the terms " holy " and " unclean " 
have the meaning asserted for them, then the word 
"sanctified" must have the same extent of meaning; 
and if so, the unbelieving partner to the marriage re- 
lation must become a member of the church in conse- 
quence of the church membership of the other partner. 

Answer: (1), The objection, of course, takes for 



46 ECCLESIOLOGY. 

granted the impossibility of marriage 'producing such 
a change in ecclesiastical relations (which we also 
hold). Then it follows that the whole statement means 
nothing. It neither means '' holy," in the sense of 
being within the external covenant, nor in the sense of 
internal spiritual holiness, nor in the sense of legiti- 
macy, and there is nothing else that it can mean. It 
is a holiness which is neither within nor without, neither 
in soul, nor spirit, nor body, nor condition, nor state, 
nor anything else. 

(2), The covenant of God never founded the privi- 
lege of church membership upon the mere fact of inter- 
marriage with his people ; but it did found it expressly 
upon the fact of being born of them. 

(3), By a positive statute adults were not to be ad- 
mitted into the church Avithout a profession of their 
faith. Hence, the doctrine of Paul must be explained 
so as to agree with the restriction of this statute. The 
believing partner does ''sanctify" the unbelieving; 
this is plainly asserted, but not so far as to make the 
unbelieving a member of the church ; this would con- 
travene the statute above named. 

(4), The very words teach that this sanctification re- 
gards the unbelieving parent, not for his own sake, but 
as a medium, affecting the transmission of covenant 
privileges to the children of a believer. The question 
was, whether, in the case of one of the parties in the 
marriage-relation being a Pagan, and the other a Chris- 
tian, the former or the latter should determine the re- 
lation of the offspring to the church, or whether neither 
should. The answer is, that in this case, where the 
argument for the children seems to be perfectly bal- 
anced by the argument against them, God has gra- 
ciously inclined the scale in favor of his people ; so 
that, for the purpose of conveying to their infants the 
privilege of being within his covenant and church, the 
unbelieving partner is sanctified by the believing. It 
must be thus or the reverse, 



The Notes or Marks of a True Church. 47 

Tins passage decides the same point in another way. 
It assumes the principle, that where hotli parents are 
reputed believers, their children belong to the church 
as a matter of course. {Mason, pp. 109-118.) So 
that the origin, as well as the solution of the difficulty, 
establishes the doctrine, that by the appointment of 
God the infants of believing parents are born members 
of his church. See Hodges Coram. i?i Inc. (1 Cor. 
vii. 14.) 



XI. 

The Notes or Marks of a True Church. ^ 

1. The occasion and importance of the question. 

2. What is a 7nark? How many kinds of marks? 
Whsit probable, and what necessary or essential marks? 
About which kind is this question ? 

3. What essential to constitute a mark ? What meant 
by its h(d\xi^ projjer ? By its being consjnciious ? 

4. The state of the question — not about the marks 
hj which a man may be probably concluded to be one 
of the elect, or of the church invisible, nor about the 
church visible, generally considered, as contradistin- 
guished from heathenism, but about a particular 
church; how the true and orthodox may be discrimi- 
nated from false and heretical churches ; how a church 
in which we can be saved is discriminated from one in 
which we cannot. 

5. These marks may be more or less fully stated. 
The Avord only, or the word wTth the addition of sac- 
raments, discipline, holy life, etc. But they all may 
be referred to the word. 



*]Sfota in Latin ; yyiop^jjia in Greek. The Greeks (Aristotle) made 
the Y''^. of two sorts — the 'prohaUe {er/.oza) and the certain {rex/irjpta). 
The question here is about the latter sort — about properties, not about 
accidents. See Turretin, L. 18. Q. 12. Art. 2. 



48 ECCLESIOLOGY. 

The voice of God is the word ; the faith of men is 
about the word ; their life and obedience is the fruit of 
the word ; the order of the church is from the word ; 
the sacraments are the seals and appendices of the 
word, or a visible word. The word is vexilhiin, 8cej>- 
trwn^ lux, norma, et stateva, 

6. A church may possess these marks more or less 
perfectly, but all must possess the fundamental doc- 
trines of the gospel. Distinction between essentials 
and non-essentials. These doctrines must not be 
judged bj^ the private opinions of doctors, but by the 
formularies of the body; and the word must be so 
preached, and the sacraments so administered, that the 
tendency of the whole shall be to gather in and more 
or less completely build up the elect of God. 

7. Proofs that the vjord is a mark of a true church : 
(1), From Scripture: John x. 27. The sheep hear 

Christ's voice; and those who make a credible pro- 
fession of hearing it are to be judged in charity to be 
his. John viii. 81, 32. " If ye abide in my words then 
are ye my disciples indeed," &c. — xiv. 23. Wherever 
Christ dwells with the Father, there is his house and 
temple, but he dwells with those who keep his word. 
Ergo, Matthew xviii. 20 ; Acts ii. 42. Further, as the 
science of contraries is one, the mark by which the 
false is discriminated from the true is a mark by which 
the true may be discriminated from the false. But 
this is by the doctrine they teach. Isa. viii. 20 ; Deut. 
xiii. 12. Illustrate here the distinction of essentials 
and non-essentials. The criterion of old was the doc- 
trine of God's unity, (Deut. xiii.) ; under the gospel 
the doctrine concerning Christ. 1 John iv. 11, &c. The 
sin of false teachers in both cases is idolatry, for God 
in Christ is the God of the New Testament. See also 
Gal. i. 8, 1 Tim. iii. 15, Eph. ii. 19, 20, and thus even 
to the end, Eph. iv. 11, 12, 13. Hence the removal of 
the candlestick is the removal of the church. Rev. 
ii. 5. 



The Notes or Marks of a True Church. 49 

(2), From the Fathers: Tertuliian, Chrysostom, Je- 
rome, Ambrose, Augustine, and even Vincent of Lirens, 
Bellarmine, and other Eoman Catholic writers ; nay, 
'' the Catholic doctrine " itself is founded upon it. See 
Turretin, iii. pp. 78, ff. 

8. But it is objected — 

1. To make the Word the mark of the church, is to 
make the less conspicuous the mark of the more. An- 
swer. The difficulty only exists under the Roman 
Catholic view of the relation of the two, the relation 
of the church and Scriptures. 

2. Doctrine cannot be the mark of the church, be- 
cause doctrine is either controverted or not. Uncon- 
troverted doctrine cannot be, because all agree upon 
it. It can be, therefore, no mark of distinction, rather 
is it a mark of communion. Controverted doctrine 
cannot be, because siib judice lis est, and the decision 
can only be made by the church, which must therefore 
have been determined to be a church previously, and 
upon independent grounds. Answer: This, again, is 
a difficulty mainly on the Popish view— denial of right 
of private judgment; for then, what is controverted 
may be determined by what is agreed. The affirma- 
tive articles may be the rule by wdiich we may decide 
the negative, as the rechim est index sui et obliqid. 
Illustrate this by the fact of the apostles citing the Old 
Testament (and see Acts xvii. 11). The Papists re- 
ceive the same Scriptures that we do, and as truth is 
one, they are bound to show that what they hold be- 
side the teaching of Scripture is in harmony with 
Scripture. Particularly illustrated by the doctrine of 
a mediator, sacrifice and intercession. Again : Answer 
by the argument ad hoininem. The notes which the 
Papists lay down are controverted. Ergo, no notes. 

3. The judgment of man is fallible. If, then, human 
reason judges what is true doctrine, it errs. Answer : 
(a). That fallible reason does not always ^yy in fact; 
if otherwise, we should never know anything. (J), Even 



50 ECCLESIOLOGY. 

if we accept the decision of an infallible church, we ac- 
cept it with a fallible reason ; therefore we err. Why 
should the infallible statements of Scripture become 
fallible when passing into the fallible medium of the 
human mind, any more than the statements of an in- 
fallible church, especially considering that Scriptures 
are so much plainer than the bulls of Popes? 

4. The common people cannot understand Scripture, 
and therefore cannot knOAV whether a church has the 
true mark or not. Answer: (a), They can understand 
Scripture as easily as the decrees of the church. (J), 
The contents of Scripture are two-fold, natural and 
supernatural. In regard to this last, all men stand on 
the same level: none can understand without the 
Spirit ; with the Spirit, all can. And the doctrine which 
constitutes the notes of a church belong to this class — 
the doctrine of salvation. At any rate, the common 
people are better judges of those notes than of those 
which the papists lay down. 

5. Making the Word a note is making the fo7vn a 
note ; but the forms of things are recondite, whereas a 
note must be conspicuous. Answer: This is true of 
sensible objects, but not of intellectual^ in which last, 
forms are the most conspicuous, and the form is the 
best note, because '' dat esse ^^2." 

6. But if the form is the being of the thing, then to 
make the form a note is to explain the thing by the 
thing itself, idevi j)^^" idem. Answer: This is done 
in every definition, a definition being only the state- 
ment of the genus and the specific difference, which 
together constitute the formal nature of a thing. 

7. Every man knows the church before he knows 
the Scriptures; i. ^., the thing before the note. Answer : 
It is not true that he knows the church, as a true 
cTiurcli^ before he knows the Scriptures ; and this is the 
knowledge in question. S^e Turretin^ L. 18, q. 12, vol. 
iii. (Carter's ed.), p. 74, ff. 



Apostolical Succession. 51 

The Pretended Notes of Eome. 

[See Turretin, L. l8, q. 13.] 

Among the notes of the church mentioned by Bel- 
larmine and discussed by Turretin, the chief is that of 
'' succession," or as it is commonly termed, ''apostolic 
succession." A full refutation of the Papal doctrine 
on this subject may be found in an article in the 
Southern Presbyterian Eevieic for July, 1872. The fol- 
lowing is that article : 

Apostolical Succession. 

xA.ll branches of the Christian church hold to an 
apostolical succession in some sense ; for without 
it there is no ground upon which the^^ can claim, with 
the slightest color of plausibility, a diyine sanction for 
their existence. Presbyterians, for example, hold that 
they haye the doctrine, the polity, the worship, which 
were taught and ordained by the apostles. They hold 
that the succession is to be determined, not by history 
or tradition, but by a direct appeal to writings which 
are not only more ancient than the writings of the 
Fathers^ but haye, according to the confessions of 
these Fathers themselyes, a divine authority — the 
writings of the apostles. The body which now holds 
the doctrine of justification without the works of the 
law, \^,pro tanto, a truer successor of the church to 
which the Epistle to the Romans was addressed, than 
the church now at Home which denies that doctrine 
and curses all who hold it.^ The body which is now 
goyerned by a presbytery is a truer successor of the 
church of Ephesus, which was also goyerned by a pres- 
bytery in the days of Paul, than a church of the present 
day which is goyerned by a prelate, an officer of which 

^ ^ee Gerhard, Loc. Tlieolog. Loc. 23, Chap. 11, § 5, § cxc. 



52 ECCLESIOLOGY. 

the apostolic records know nothing. All this is true, 
whatever the hiterveidng history may he J" 

We need not say that this is not the sense in which 
the term is used in this article. It is of the apostol- 
ical succession as held by the papists and their ^' apists" 
that we propose to treat, and especially of the doctrine 
as held by the papists, which alone can claim the 
merit of being intelligible or consistent. The doctrine 
as held by their imitators, as we may take occasion to 
show, is mere moonshine, having no meaning, because 
separated from the system of doctrine and worship of 
which it forms a part, and because destitute, upon its 
own principles, of any true historical basis. 

The fundamental principle of the apostolical succes- 
sion is thus stated by the Council of Trent : " Sacrifice 
and priesthood have been so joined together by the 
ordination of God, that both have existed under every 
dispensation. Since, therefore, the CathoHc Church, 
under the New Testament, has received, by institution 
of the Lord, the holy, visible sacrifice of the Eucharist, 
it ought also to be confessed that there is in it a new, 
visible and external priesthood. Further, that this 
priesthood was instituted by the same Lord our 
Saviour, and that to the apostles and their successors 
in the priesthood he gave the power of consecrating, 
offering and administering his body and blood, as also 
of remitting and retaining sins. Holy Writ shows, and 
the tradition of the Catholic Church has always 
taught." t 

* There is still another sense in which the term may be used. There 
has been such an order of men as Christian ministers, continuously 
from the time of the apostles to this day. This is a very different 
thing from the *' apostolic succession" in the mouths of papists and 
prelatists, which is the succession, in an unbroken line, of this or that 
indixidual minister. "How ridiculous it would be thought," says 
Archbishop W'hately {Kingdom of Christ, Essay II., § 30), "if a man 
laying claim to the throne of some country should attempt to establish 
it without producing and ])roving his own pedigree, merely hy showing 
that that country had always been under hereditary regal government!''' 

t Concil. Trident. Canones et Decreta. Sess. 23, Chap. 1, 



Apostolical Succession. 53 

Note, then, carefully, that among the papists, apos- 
tolical succession means a succession of priests ^ in 
the proper sense of the word, sacerdotes, l^o^^^, officers 
whose business it is to offer true and proper expiatory 
and propitiatory sacrifices. That this is the meaning 
of the Council is not left to inference or conjecture. 
It says that there has been a priesthood under every 
dispensation of religion; it argues that the eucharist 
is a sacrifice, and therefore there must be a priesthood 
to offer it ; in the canon corresponding with this de- 
cree, it curses all who say that the priesthood is ''only 
an office and a naked ministry for preaching the 
gospel," and not a yisible and external sacerdothim ; 
it derives this priesthood from Christ, as the Levitical 
priesthood was derived from Aaron ; that is, from 
Christ, not as the founder of the Christian Institute, 
but as the first in order of priests under the new law, 
as Aaron was the first in the order of priests under the 
old ; and, in proof of this, referring to Heb. v. 4, 5, it 
makes the apostles Christ's immediate successors as 
priests, and the priests of Rome the successors of the 
apostles as priests. 

The difference between their priests and the minis- 
ters of the gospel, is much wider than between the 
priests of the family of Aaron and the ordinary Levites 
who were not of that family. It cannot be too care- 
fully borne in mind, that the question of apostolical 
succession is a question about the succession oij^^'i^sts, 
not at all of ministers of the icord. 

Note, in the second place, that the apostolical suc- 
cession involves a pecuhar view of the sacraments. 
The priests are not ministers of the word, and, of 
course, a sacrament is not a verhuni visihile, as Augus- 
tine calls it ; not a sign of truths conveyed by the word, 
and differing from the word (so far as it is a sign) only 
in the kind of language employed as a vehicle. If this 

* The English word priest is simply "presbyter writ short." 



54 ECCLESIOLOGY. 

view were allowed, the priests of the new law would be 
no better than those of the old. Their sacrifices would 
be only symbols and actually convey no grace. So 
low a view of her priesthood Rome cannot tolerate. 
^*The power with which the Christian priesthood is 
clothed," says the Catechism of the Council of Trent, 
''is a heavenly power, raised above that of angels; it 
h^s its source, not in the Levitical priesthood, but in 
Christ the Lord, who was a priest, not according to 
Aaron, but according to the order of Melchisedec." 
So again the same Catechism: ''Priests and bishops 
are, as it were, the interpreters and heralds (inter- 
nuncii) of God, commissioned in his name to teach 
mankind the law of God and the precepts of a Chris- 
tian life; they are the representatives of God upon 
earth. It is impossible, therefore, to conceive a more 
exalted dignity, or functions more sacred. Justly, 
therefore, are they called, not only angels (Mai. ii. 7), 
but gods (Ps. Ixxxii. 6),"^ holding as they do the place 
and power and authority of God on earth. But the 
priesthoood, at all times an elevated office, transcends 
in the new law all others in dignity. The power of 
consecrating and offering the body and blood of our 
Lord, and of remitting sins, with which the priesthood 
of the new law is invested, is such as cannot be com- 
prehended by the human mind, still less is it equalled 
by, or assimilated to, anything on earth." 

* Papists are not good interpreters. This passage has no reference at 
all to the Levitical priests. It is " a brief and pregnant statement of 
the responsibilities attached to the judicial office under the Mosaic dis- 
pensation. " The judges are frequently called ' ' gods " in the law. (See 
Exod. xxi. 6; xxii. 8, 9, in the Hebrew Mo/r/m. ) Hence vs. 6, '■' lliam 
said, Ye are gods." Augustine (Enarratio in p. 81) regards Israel as a 
whole as the subject of the Psalm, and 'vs. 6, as an address specially to 
the electa eos qui prcedestinati sunt in mtam cuternam. The authors of 
the Catechism are unfortunate in citing a passage for the purpose of 
glorifying the priesthood, in which the tone throughout is one of severe 
rebuke, and in which these "'gods " are told they shall ''die like men." 
Our priesthood is one which knows no change by reason of death — one 
after the power of an endless life. (See 7th chapter of Hebrews, 'pdS- 
sim.) 



Apostolical Succession. 55 

Every priest is ordained to offer gifts and sacrifices ; 
wlierefore these priests must have somewhat to offer. 
The preaching of the word will not do, because any- 
body who knows the plan of salvation may tell it to 
his fellow-sinners. Singing, praying, and alms-giving 
will not do, for a similar reason. The two sacraments 
of the New Testament have been pitched upon because 
they are symbolical ordinances ; and the meaning of a 
symbol is more easily perverted than the meaning of 
words. The ordinance of baptism has been perverted, 
as to its matter, by substituting a mixture of oil, spit- 
tle, salt, and water, for the element of water (that is, an 
element which defiles has been substituted for the ele- 
ment that clecuises); it has been perverted, as to its 
form, by ascribing a significance to it altogether dif- 
ferent from that which the New Testament ascribes to 
it; and-it has been perverted, as to its design, by mak- 
ing it a physical cause of grace to the recipient in 
every case in which no obstruction is opposed to its 
operation. It is not the baptism of the New Testa- 
ment at all, but a ceremony totally different. It re- 
quires, therefore, a different kind of administrator 
from that minister of the word whose office it is, by 
the appointment of Christ, to administer Christian 
baptism. 

In like manner they have perverted the ordinance 
of the supper. It is no longer a simple memorial of 
the sacrifice of Christ, which Avas offered once for all, 
but a true and proper offering of the body, blood, and 
divinity of Christ continually for the living and the 
dead. The matter, form, and design of this sacrament 
have all been so perverted, that its identity has been 
lost. ^' We therefore confess," says the Tridentine Cat- 
echism,^' ''that the sacrifice of the mass is one and the 

* See the Cat. Trident, od the Sacrament of the Eucharist. We quote, 
for the most part, from the English translation made by Donovan, Pro- 
fessor of the Koyal College, Maynooth. Bait., 1833. So also the 
Council itself (Sess. 22) in its Canons, Canon 2. "If any shall say 
5 



56 ECCLESIOLOGY. 

same sacrifice with that of the cross; the victim is one 
and the same, Christ Jesus, who offered himself, once 
only, a bloody sacrifice on the altar of the cross. The 
bloody and the unbloody victim is still one and the 
same, and the oblation of the cross is daily renewed in 
the encharistic sacrifice, in obedience to the command 
of our Lord, ' This do for a commemoration of me.' 
The Priest is also the same, Christ our Lord : the min- 
isters wdio offer this sacrifice consecrate the holy mys- 
teries, not in their own person, but in the person of 
Christ. This the words of consecration declare : the 
priest does not say, ' This is the body of Christ,' but, 
' This is my body ; ' and thus invested wdth the charac- 
ter of Christ, he changes the substance of the bread 
and wane into the substance of his real body and blood. 
That the holy sacrifice of the mass, therefore, is not 
only a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, or a com- 
memoration of the sacrifice of the cross, but also a sac- 
rifice of propitiation, by wdiich God is appeased and 
rendered propitious, the pastor will teach as a dogma 
defined by the unerring authority of a General Council 

that (Jhrist in these words, 'Do this in commemoration of me/ did not 
make the apostles jDriests, or that he did not ordain that the}" and other 
priests should offer his own bod 3^ and blood, let him be anathema." 
Can. 3. "If any one say that the sacrifice of the mass is a sacrifice 
only of praise and thanksgiving, or a bare commemoration of the sac- 
rifice x^erformed upon the cross, and not also sl propitiatory sacrifice; 
or that it profits only him who receives it, and ought not to be offered 
for the living and the dead, for sins, punishments, satisfactions, and 
other necessities, let him be anathema." 

Bossuet, in his Exposition de la Doctrine de VEglise Catliolique, -which 
was written for the purpose of conciliating the French Protestants, 
softens the statement of the Council, or, at least, cites (in 13) the mild- 
est language of Sess. 22, c. 1, and insists that the church in offering 
Christ to God in this sacrament, does the same thing which is done in 
the Reformed Church, except that the one affirms and the other de- 
nies the real presence. He denies that Rome pretends to offer any new 
propitiation for the appeasing of God anew, as if he had not been suf- 
ficiently aj^peased by the sacrifice of the cross ; or that any supplement 
is made to the price of our redemption, as if it were insufficient. He 
represents all as being done in the sacrament in the way of intercession 
and application. Yet he expressh^ holds the doctrine of Trent, and 
what that is we have seen. 



Apostolical Succession. 57 

of the church." The papists make a distinction, in- 
deed, between the encharist considered as a sacrainent 
and the sacrifice^' but the distinction is of no importance 
in the present argument. 

Further, the papists hold that all grace is conveyed 
through the sacraments; that ''by them all true right- 
eousness begins, or being begun is increased, or hav- 
ing been lost is restored."t They hold, also, that the 
grace is always conferred upon the recipient of the 
sacrament, where duly administered, unless the recipi- 
ent places a bar or obstacle in the way ; and the Trent 
Council curses all who say the contrary.:): None, there- 
fore, can be saved without baptism, § and all baptized iii- 
fants (since they can oppose no " bar") are regenerated. 
As the sacraments can be administered (except in cer- 
tain extreme cases) only by a priest, the priests have the 
whole matter of salvation absolutely in their own hands. 



* See the Koman Catechism on the Sacrament of the Eucharist. It 
says : ' ' The difference between the encharist as a sacrament and a sac- 
rifice is verj^ great, and is twofold. As a sacrament, it is perfected by 
consecration; as a sacrifice, all its efficacy consists in its oblation. 
When deposited in a tabernacle, or borne to the sick, it is therefore 
not a sacrifice, but a sacrament. As a sacrament, it is also to the wor- 
thy receiver a source of merit, and brings with it all those advantages 
which we have already mentioned ; as a sacrifice, it is not only a source 
of merit, but also of satisfaction. As in his passion our Lord merited 
and satisfied for us, so in the oblation of this sacrifice, which is a bond 
of Christian unity. Christians merit the fruit of his passion, and satisfy 
for sin." 

t Goncil. Trident^ Decretum de Sacramentis, Sess. 7, proemium. 

X Canon 6, of Sess. 7. In Canon 8 all are cursed who say that the 
sacraments do not confer grace ex opere operato, but that faith alone 
in the divine promise is sufficient to obtain the grace. 

§ Baptism is of great consequence in Kome, as it ought to be, seeing 
they make it the sacrament of justification. But the glory of the 
priesthood consists in the privilege of immolating Christ, and of judi- 
cially absolving men from their sins. Baptism may be administered 
even by a woman, by Jews, infidels, and heretics, in case of necessity, 
provided they intend to do what the church does in that act of her 
ministry. Cat. Trid. 07i tJie Saci^ament of Baptism. But the ewch^iisU 
the sacrifice of the mass, and judicial absolution, can be administered 
only by a priest. Con. Trid. jSess. 14, chapter 6 ; Oat. on the Euchar- 
ist, 72. • 



58 ECCLESIOLOOY. 

The power of the priest to confer grace by the sacra- 
ments is not impaired by his personal character, how- 
ever fonl. He may be living in ^^ mortal" sin ; he may, 
like the Pope Alexander Borgia, be mixing poison with 
the wine which he is about to give his friend at his own 
table ; nevertheless, he can confer the grace of God in 
the sacraments ; and, in Can. 12, Sess. 7, the holy 
Council curses all who say the contrary. The sacra- 
ments are everything ; the preaching of the word no- 
thing, in this holy, catholic, apostolic church. 

Again, as to the mode in which the priests, since the 
time of the apostles, become their successors Home holds 
that it is by the sacrament of orders. The main points 
of their doctrine are: (a), That as Christ made the 
apostles priests by imparting to them the Holy Ghost 
and the power of judicial absolution (John xx. 22, 23), 
so the apostles have transmitted to their successors, 
the bishops of Rome, the same gifts ; which bishops, 
in their turn, by imposition of hands, communicate the 
priesthood to the lower order. (J), That, as in the sac- 
raments of baptism and confirmation an indelible char- 
acter is imparted, so also in the sacrament of., orders. 
Bj^ this indelible character, he who has once become a 
priest is alwaj^s a priest ; he can never again become a 
laic.^ (c), That with this process the people have no- 
thing at all to do. They have no voice at all in mak- 
ing priests. Canon 7, Sess. 23 of Trent. The priest- 
hood is a distinct casle. They perpetuate the church 
as the apostles created it before them. 

These points constitute the essence of the doctrine 
of orders. The apostolical succession as held in Rome 
is, therefore, summarily comprehended in the three as- 
sertions : (a). That there is a true and proper priest- 
hood on earth, under the Christian dispensation. (J), 
That there is a true and proper sacrifice, to be continu- 
ally oJBfered. (c). That the succession of priests is se- 
cured bj^ the sacrament of orders ; this last point, of 

*SeeCon.Trid. D. and C, Sess. 23,* Can. 4. 



Apostolical Succession. 59 

course, involving the assertion of the succession as a 
fact in liistory. We propose to consider these in their 
order. 

I. As to the priesthood under the ^^new law," as the 
papists delight to call the gospel, we remark : 

1. That scarcely any truth is more clearly revealed 
in the New Testament than that of the 'universal priest- 
hood of believers. The passages in which it is either 
expressly asserted or taken for granted, are too nu- 
merous to be cited. One or two will suffice : '' Ye are 
a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, 
a peculiar people." 1 Pet. ii. 9; comp. vs. 5. The pa- 
pist will of course say that this description of believers 
under the gospel is identical with that of Israel under 
the law (Ex. xix. 5, 6); and that, as the general priestly 
character of Israel w^as consistent, in point of fact, with 
the existence of a special order of priests in the family 
of Aaron ; so a special order of priests is hj no means in- 
compatible with the universal priesthood of believers 
under the gospel. As an abstract proposition, this may 
be conceded ; but there is a very great difference be- 
tween the two dispensations in point of fact. First, 
there is no institution of a priesthood in the New Tes- 
tament as there was in the Old. Second, there is no limi- 
tation put upon the exercise of priestly functions or 
privileges on the part of the priestly people under the 
New Testament as there was under the Old. Let the 
papists show us any chapters in the New Testament 
corresponding with such as the Leviticus viii. in the 
Old, and we will believe them. They have their ''sol- 
emn ceremonies" in the consecration of their priests ; 
but they are ceremonies which the court of Bome. not 
Jesus Christ, has ordained. If they say they observe 
the rites ordained in Leviticus, then they confess that 
their priesthood is after all the Aaronic, and not, as 
they have been accustomed to boast, a priesthood after 
the order of Melchisedec. Let them show us in the 
New Testament any such stern prohibitions against the 



60 ECCLESIOLOGY. 

people intermeddling with priestly functions as there 
are in the Old. So far from finding any such prohibi- 
tions, we find no discrimination at all, in regard to 
priestly character and function, between the ministry 
and the people, or (to use the language of Rome) be- 
tween the clergy and the laity. It is the duty and privi- 
lege of all alike to offer spiritiml sacrifices acceptable 
to God through Jesus Christ. The writer of the E2)is- 
tle to the Hehrevjs exhorts his brethren, without any 
note of distinction, to do what the high priest alone 
could do, and that only once a year, under the law — 
/'to draw near with a true heart "unto God." He bases 
this exhortation upon the fact that they have '' bold- 
ness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a 
new and living way which he hath consecrated for them, 
through the veil, that is to say, his flesh ; and upon the 
fact that they have a High Priest over the house of 
God." Heb. X. 19-22. 

2. The apostles are nowhere called priests, or rep- 
resented as performing priestly functions. Considering 
the extent to which the institutions and technical lan- 
guage of the Old Testament moulded the forms of rep- 
resentation in the New, this fact is very noteworthy. 
The apostles do sometimes use the sacerdotal and sacri- 
cial language of the Old Testament to describe their 
work, but it is always under conditions which show, 
beyond doubt, that they are speaking figuratively. 
Thus Paul (Rom. xv. 16) speaks of himself as " the min- 
ister (Asizouoydi^) of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles, minis- 
tering (hpo'jpyo'JiyTa) the gospel of God, that the offer- 
ing up (TZfjodi/'Ofja) of the Gentiles might be acceptable, 
being sanctified {yjy^aa/jjyr^) by the Hoh^ Ghost." ^ Here 
observe, (a), That while the word hczo'jfrfbv has no 

* The argument here is all the stronger, because, as Whatel}^ says 
{Cautions for the Times, p. 40), "Paul is ^GivrnWy searching iox some- 
thing in his own office, to parallel the function 5 of a priest" — and 
this is all that he can find. How differentlj^ would a Papal priest, "now 
writing to the church of Rome, express himself ! 



Apostolical Succession. 61 

strictly sacerdotal sense, being used for any public 
functionary (as for instance, in this yery epistle, chap- 
ter xiii. G, of the ciyil magistrate ; comp. ys. 4, ocdxoi^o::)^ 
yet we concede that there may be a reference to its sa- 
cerdotal use in the Septuagint. (See Deut. x. 8; xyii. 
12 ; Joel i. 9 ; comj). Hebrew x. 11). (J), That the second 
word, which is undoubtedly sacerdotal, is explained 
by the nature of the offering which is made to God, to 
wit, the (ientiles, not the mass. If the Gentiles are a 
sacrifice in the strict and literal sense of the term, then, 
of course, Paul is a irriest, in the same sense. But the 
first will not be asserted, w^e apprehend, eyen by a pa- 
pist. The truth is, Paul's statement amounts to this : 
'^ I am indeed a priest, but my priestly functions are 
exercised in preaching the glad tidings to the Gentiles, 
and in making an offering to God of those who are, 
through the word, sanctified by the Holy Ghost." If 
the priesthood of Rome were of this kind, no objection 
could be made to it. But it is altogether different. Its 
office is to offer a propitiatory sacrifice for the liying 
and the dead. 

We haye said that the a2)ostles use sacrificial lan- 
guage in describing their work. But Paul, we belieye, 
is the only one of the apostles who does ; and he only 
in the instance cited, unless Rom. xii. 1, Phil. ii. 17, 2 
Tim. iy. 6, be considered instances. Peter, the '' first 
pope," neyer uses it, so far as we haye been able to 
find, in special application to the ministry. His style 
is, '' We will giye ourselyes to the ministry (ocaxo'Au) of 
the word and to prayer." Acts yi. 4. '' The elders who 
are among you I exhort, who am your fellow-elder and 
a witness of the sufferings of Christ, and also a partaker 
of the glory that shall be reyealed ; feed the flock of 
God which is among you, taking the oyersight thereof 
(or, performing the office of bishops in it), not by con- 
straint, but willingly; not for filthy lucre, but of a 
ready mind; neither as being lords oyer God's heri- 



62 ECCLESIOLOGY. 

tage, "^ but being ensamples to the flock." 1 Pet. v. 1-3. 
How strange would such words sound from the mouth 
of his pretended successors! It is too plain that the 
ministr}^ of the apostles was not the same as the min- 
istr}^ of the papal priesthood ; and that if the papal 
ministers are true and proper priests, they possess a 
dignity to which the apostles, with Peter at their head, 
did not dream of aspiring. It is hardly necessarj^ to say 
that we hold with the apostles. 

3. Not only do the apostles say that all believers are 
priests, and claim no special priestly character for 
themselves, but a special argument is made by one of 
them to show that there can be no true and proper 
priests on earth since the offering of Jesus Christ and 
his passing into the heavens. The doctrine of Eome 
makes utter nonsense of the Epistle to the Hebrews, 
and particularly of the 7th chapter. The papists say 
that their priesthood is of the order of Melchisedec ; 
and yet the main feature of the priesthood of Melchis- 
edec, according to the apostle, is that it achmts of no 
.succession. ''They trulj^ (the Levitical priests) were 
many priests, because they were not suffered to con- 
tinue by reason of death ; but this man, because he 
continueth ever, hath an unchangeable priesthood." 
Heb. vii. 23, 24. But why quote particular verses ? 
Almost every verse in this chapter is a dagger Avhich 
goes to the heart of the papal theory. Nothing but 
the most audacious effrontery could venture to main- 
tain such a theorj^ in the face of such an argument. 
The papal priesthood is simpty an insult, impudent 
and shameless, to Christ, who alone possesses a priest- 
hood after the order of Melchisedec. It is not only 
destitute of even the shadow of evidence, but is a di- 

*Tliis is the only instance in which the word yJSipo^ is used of per- 
sons in the New^ Testament : and yet it is the word from w^hich the 
w^ord clergy comes. According to this passage, the clergy, or inherit- 
ance of God, is the laity, or flock, which is in danger of being lorded 
over. See Campbell's Lect. on Eccl. History, L. 9. This is worthy of 
being noted, because the distinction of clergy and laity came in with 
the notion of a sacerdotal ministry in the church. 



Apostolical Succession. 63 

rect contradiction to the teaching of the Scriptures ; 
and being the corner-stone of the apostolical succes- 
sion, the whole structure tumbles into ruins, or, rather, 
is proved to be ''the baseless fabric of a vision." 

II. As to tli.e next element involved in this doctrine, 
the power of the priesthood to offer a true and proper 
sacrifice, it need not detain us so long. For, 

1. If there be no proper priesthood on earth, there can 
of course be no proper offering of sacrifice. Priesthood 
and sacrifice go together ; together they stand or fall. 

2. The only true and proper sacrifice which the pa- 
pal priests pretend to offer is that of the mass; and 
this is a pure invention of men, instigated no doubt 
by the devil, that restless plotter against the glory of 
Christ and the salvation of his church. 

It would be out of place in this discussion to enter 
into an elaborate argument against the sacrifice of the 
mass. It will be sufficient to say, (a), That the silence 
of the Scriptures seals its condemnation. It is alto- 
gether incredible that nothing should be said about 
any sacrifice in the eucharist, if that ordinance were 
a sacrifice, and especially if it had occupied the 
place in the religion of the apostles which it occupies 
in the religion of Rome — if it had been considered a 
fundamental point and necessary to the proper observ- 
ance of Christian worship. The apostles give line upon 
line and precept upon precept in regard to things which 
the papists themselves would confess to be of very in- 
ferior importance, and yet sa}" nothing about this. This 
silence is the more remarkable upon the papal theory, 
because the doctrine of the mass is, by their o^n con- 
fession, hard to be believed, indeed plainly contradicted 
even by the testimony of the senses, and therefore lia- 
ble to the strongest assaults of Satan. Further, how^ 
can these Judaizers account for the fact that, while in 
the old law there is constant mention of priests and 
sacrifices, and most minute details as to both, ^ve find 
nothing corresponding in the new^? It is indeed an 



64 ECCLESIOLOGY. 

awful viystery^ since the apostles have not even at- 
tempted to throw any light upon it. 

But not too fast. The papists pretend that they do 
find in the New Testament a sacrificial character as- 
cribed to the eucharist. For example, 1 Cor. x. 21 ; 
Heb. xiii. 10. Now% as to the first passage, it is suffi- 
cient to remark that Paul does not compare the table 
of the eucharist with the altar of the Gentiles, but the 
Lord's table with the table. oi demons. The table of 
demons is not the altar of the Gentiles upon which 
they sacrificed to their idols, but the table upon which, 
after the sacrifice had been offered, the meats were 
spread for a feast in honor of the idol. And even if 
the comparison had been one between the Lord's table 
and altars, the conclusion would not follow which papal 
logic seeks to draw ; for the apostle is not concerned 
about the reason and nature of altar or sacrifice, but 
only about the communion or participation of the wor- 
shippers with it. He aims to show that the Corinthi- 
ans could not with a good conscience be present at 
these feasts in the idol-temples, because they had been 
made partakers of the Lord's supper, and so had com- 
munion with Christ and professed his religion, as those 
who ate of the ancient victims under the law were made 
''partakers of the altar," that is, professed the Jewish 
rehgion.^ 

As to Heb. xiii. 10, we remark that nothing is said 
here about the eucharist ; that the only sacrifices men- 
tioned in the context as connected with this altar are 
-praise and ahns-giving (vs. 15, 16); that the altar is 
said to be Christ himself in ys. 15 ;t and in vs. 9 we 
have a solemn warning against just such a religion as 
Rome teaches — a religion of meats and not of grace, 

* See Turretin, L. 19, Q. 29. 0pp. 3, p. 456, Carter's Ed 
t So Aquinas : ' ' This altar is either the cross of Christ, or Christ 
himself, in ^vhom and hj whom we offer our prayers to God. " Bel- 
larmine, though not very scrupulous about the arguments he uses, 
does not urge this place, because many Catholics understand by altar 
here, Christ and the cross. See Turret, ut supi^a. 



Apostolical Succession. 65 

(b), The only other argiiment we shall mention 
against the mass is that of the Epistle to the Hebrews. 
The argument is of the same sort with that respecting 
the priesthood. As the perfection of the priesthood of 
Christ admits of no succession of mortal priests, so 
the perfection of his sacrifice admits of no repeated 
sacrifices. Let us quote one passage only from the 
Hebrews: ''Nor yet that Christ should offer himself 
often, as the high priest entereth into the holy place 
every year with the blood of others ; for then must he 
often have suffered since the foundation of the world ; 
but now once in the end of the world hath he 
ap]3eared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. 
And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after 
this the judgment ; so Christ was once offered to bear 
the sins of many; and unto them that look for him 
shall he appear the second time, without sin unto sal- 
vation. For the law, having a shadow of good things 
to come, . . . can never, with those sacrifices which 
they offered year by year continually, make the com- 
ers thereunto perfect. For then would they not have 
ceased to be offered? because that the worshippers, 
once purged, should have had no more conscience of 
sins. But in those sacrifices there is a remembrance 
again made of sins every year." Heb. ix. 25-28; x. 
1-3. This sword of the Spirit effectually cuts the 
throat of the sacrifice of the mass. With respect both 
to the priesthood and the sacrifice, the papists have 
done the very thing against which the whole Epistle 
to the Hebrews is a warning. They have apostatized 
from the gospel, and have gone back to Judaism. 

Having thus disposed of the second element of the 
doctrine of succession, we may tarry, before proceed- 
ing to the next, to say a word or two in reference to 
the doctrine of sacramental grace in all its forms. 
J^i7'st : The whole idea of the papists and their apists, 
that salvation is conveyed through the sacraments 
rather than through the word, is utterly foreign to the 



66 ECCLESIOLOGY. 

thinking and langnage of the New Testament, which 
gives this prominence to the word and not to the sac- 
raments. Take an example or two out of very many. 
Paul says to the Corinthians (1 Epistle i. 14-17), '' I 
thank God I baptized none of you but Crispus and 
Gains, lest any should say that I had baptized in my 
own nanje. . . . For Christ sent me 7iot to haptize^ hut 
to preach the gospelT So Peter: ''Being born again, 
not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, hy the 
vjord of God, which liveth and abideth for ever; . . . 
and this is the word which by the gospel is preached 
unto you." 1 Peter i. 23-25. And even where the 
sacrament is spoken of as the means of regeneration, 
it is almost always coupled with the word, or, if not, 
sotnething is added in order to guard against the error 
that there is any efficacy in it ex opere oj^erato. Thus 
in Epii. V. 26, Paul speaks of the cliurch as sanctified 
and cleansed "with the washing of water hy the loordr 
''Go . . . preach the gospel. . . . He that believeth 
and is baptized shall be saved." Mark xvi. So Peter, 
in speaking of baptism as saving us, takes care to say 
that he is not speaking of the outward ordinance, Imt 
the answer of a irood conscience toward God. 1 Peter 
iii. 21. 

The idea of the apostles was that the icord was the 
charter of salvation, and conveyed everything that was 
conveyed; that the sacraments were a species of sym- 
bolical word, and ijro tanto performed the same office 
as the word written or spoken; and that in addition 
to being signs or symbolical words, the sacraments 
were seals of the word as charter, ratifying the cove- 
nant contained in the word, and possessing no value 
whatever if detached from the word. The doctrine of 
Home, that by the sacraments all grace begins, and 
when begun is increased, or when lost is restored, has 
not the shadow of a foundation in the Scriptures, or 
in common sense. 

Second : That there is no grace given except through 



Apostolical Succession. 67 

the sacraments, is a doctrine still more monstrous ; 
flatly contradicting many passages of the Scriptures. 
See, for example, the case of Peter in Acts x. 47, where 
the "first pope" argues from the fact that these hea- 
then had received the Holy Ghost, that no man could 
forbid them to be baptized. And then, be it observed, 
he does not baptize them himself, but commands them 
to be baptized. No more than his beloved brother 
Paul, does Peter seem to have been anxious about the 
rite of baptism, provided only it was done decently 
and in order."^^ But the papists and their imitators 

* "No passage can be produced from the New Testameut in which 
administration of the sacraments is, by a divine law, restricted to the 
apostles and their delegates, or the grace of these ordinances made de- 
pendent upon the persons of the administrators. See Acts ii 41 ; viii. 
3«; ix. 18. (Ananias, for all we know, was a layman.) The two sac- 
raments have, in the lapse of time, experienced a very different fate. 
By the Donatist controversy the principle was established, that baptism, 
even when administered by those not in the communion with the 
church, if only the word and the element had been present, was so 
far valid as that it was not to be repeated in the case of those who, 
having been baptized in schism, became reconciled to the church. It 
was argued by Augustine, most conclusively, that the sacrament is 
Christ's, not his who administers it; and derives its virtue from the 
sacred name in which it is administered. This was in effect discon- 
necting the validity of the ordinance from the person of the adminis- 
trator; for though it was still maintained that the recipient, so long as 
he continued in a state of schism, derived no benefit from his baptism, 
still the ordinance itself was i^ronounced valid, and, as such, was not 
to be repeated. . . . The eucharist, on the contrary, has always been 
most jealously guarded from the profanation of lay hands. Yet if 
there is any difference in the Scriptures, as regards this point, between 
the two sacraments, baptism is the one which has more the appearance 
of being restricted. (Matt, xxviii. 19.) But it is characteristic of the 
church system to be most peremptory and exclusive in its decisions 
where the Scriptures supply the slenderest fonndation for them." See 
Litton's Chnrch of Christ, p. 635. 

The validity of the sacraments, therefore, does not require them to 
be administered by certain officers; but the great law of ''decency 
and order " makes it necessary that the church should appoint certain 
persons to this office ; and the ministers of the word, for obvious rea- 
sons, are the persons whom the church has appointed. This is the com- 
mon doctrine of the Keformed theologians. See, for instance, Tur- 
retin, Be Necess. Secess. Nostra ah Ecd. Rom., Disp. 8, 18, (Vol. 
IV., p. 190 of Carter's Ed., N. Y., 1848). Turretin is inconsistent 
with himself. See his Theolog. Elemch., L. 19., Q. 14. He admits 



68 ECCLESIOLOGY. 

must make much of it, or their apostolical succession 
is nothing worth. Hence they must '' deny the yalidity 
of all baptism but their own, and in defiance of decency, 
charity, and common sense, refuse to inter an infant 
who has not passed under their own patent process of 
regeneration. The consequence is that they throw 
doubt (and many of them do not scruple to avow it) 
on the final state of the myriads of unbaptized infants. 
Whether they are, as some of the Fathers believed, 
neither happy nor miserable— consigned to a state of 
joyless apathy, or condemned to eternal suffering — w^e 
are all, it seems, in the dark. We may hope the best, 
but that is all the comfort that can be given us. To a 
Christian contemplating this world of sorrow, it has 
ever been one of the most delightful sources of coiiso- 
lation, that the decree Avhich involved even infancy in 
the sentence of death, has converted a great part of 
the primeval curse into a blessing, and has peopled 
heaven with myriads of immortals, who, after one brief 
pang of unremembered sorrow, have laid down forever 
the burdens of humanit3^ It has been the dear belief 
of the Christian mother, that the provisions of the 
great spiritual economy are extended to the infant 
whom she brought forth in sorrow, and whom she com- 
mitted to the dust with a sorroAv still deeper ; that it 
will assuredly welcome her at the gates of paradise, 
arrayed in celestial beauty and radiant with a cherub's 
smile. But all these gloriously sustaining hopes must 
be overcast in order to keep the mystical power of re- 
generation exclusively in the hands of the Episcopal 
clergy. All charity, all decency, all humanity, as well 

that some of the Fathers approved it, in Q. 13. In case of necessity, 
the general calhng of Christians and the law of charity take the place 
of any particular calling of officers, and the law of decency and order. 
Even the papists admit the same as to the sacrament of baptism, though 
upon the false ground of the absolute necessity of this ordinance to salva- 
tion. See CamphelVs Lect. on Eccl. History, L. IV. (specially i3p. 
58-72) London, Tegg, 1840, for quotations from the Fathers on the 
matter of authority to administer the sacraments. 



Apostolical Succession. 69 

as all common sense, are to be outraged, rather than 
that the power of conferring some inconceivable non- 
entity should be abandoned." ^' 

Third: This doctrine in its extreme form is the 
merest paganism, and resembles much more the ma- 
gical rites and mummeries of people sunk in brutish, 
heathenish ignorance, than that '^reasonable service" 
which God requires of his worshippers. It is a system 
of forms which does not compel men to recognize a 
God, smj more than the laws of nature compel such a 
recognition. It is a system whose tendency is directly 
to infidelity and atheism. It supposes that God de- 
parts from his usual method of working by the laws of 
nature to accomplish effects which can be discerned 
neither by sense nor reason. The mystic regeneration, 
so far as can be known, leaves the person regenerated 
in no respect changed. He is neither wiser nor better 
than before; just as capable of committing mortal sin, 
and in as great danger of eternal damnation, as if the 
priest's hands had not applied the magic mixture of 
water, oil, spittle, and salt. It has not even the plausi- 
bility of the juggler's tricks ; for the juggler appears to 
work effects which are extraordinary. What evidence 
can miracles afford to a man who believes the doctrine 
of transubstantiation ? Miracles appeal to the senses. 
This is the differentia by which they are discriminated 
from every other immediate act of God upon the crea- 
ture. But in transubstantiation we are required to be- 
lieve a miracle which contradicts the senses. How 
then can a miracle ever authenticate a divine revela- 
tion ? If the reality of the change in the substance o£ 
the bread and wine is ascertained to us by the words, 
" This is my body," the question may be asked, how 
are we to know that these words were ever spoken or 
written ? It will not do to appeal to the testimony of 
eye or ear, for transubstantiation pronounces the testi- 

* Edinburgh Bemeic^ for April, 1843, p. 274, Amer. Ed. 



70 ECCLESIOLOGY. 

mony of the senses untrustworthy. If God were to im- 
press the reaUty of the fact upon the mind directly^ 
still the revelation could never go beyond the mind 
that received it. It could never be authenticated to the 
minds of other men. -So that the doctrine of sacra- 
mental grace is either nothing at all, a pure imposture, 
or its legitimate consequence is absolute pyrrhonism. 
It is substantially the philosophy of Hume under a re- 
ligious guise. 

III. We proceed now to the last point involved in 
the papal doctrine of succession. It might seem su- 
perfluous to argue the question anj^ further. If there 
was no priesthood instituted by Christ, if the apostles 
were not priests, then of course there can be no suc- 
cession of priests. Remove the facts of a priesthood 
and a sacrifice (in the sense before explained, the pa- 
pal sense) in the apostolic age, you remove the very 
foundation of the apostolical succession, and the whole 
structure tumbles into ruins. This, we venture to think, 
has been very effectually done, if the Scriptures are to 
be the rule of judgment. But we shall undertake ex 
abundanti, as the logicians say, to prove that, even if the 
apostles were priests, they have had no successors, or at 
least that there are none who can know and prove 
themselves to be such, which amounts to the same 
thing. De non aj^parentibus et de non existentibus eadem 
est ratio. 

1. It is a principle clearly laid down in the Scrip- 
tures, that no one may presume to undertake sacer- 
dotal functions without a divine call or commission. 
'' No man taketh this honor unto himself, but he that 
is called of God, as was Aaron." Heb. v. 4."^' Every 

* It is to be regretted that these words should generally be quoted by 
Protestant writers in proof of the necessity of a divine call to the or- 
dinary officers in the church. Such a call is indeed necessary, but 
not a direct and immediate call, such as the call of Aaron, and of 
Christ, to their respective orders of priesthood. This sacerdotal call 
is immediate, without the intervention of the church, and in the 
Hebrews (chap, v.) the writer uses the words in application only to 



Apostolical Succession. 71 

attempt on the part of unauthorized persons to invade 
the priest's office among the Jews was visited with se- 
vere penalties. For this offence Korah and his com- 
pany w^ere destroyed, and Uzziah struck with leprosy. 
The papists of course apply this principle to their pre- 
tended priesthood, a fortiori^ since the Christian 
priesthood as much excels the Levitical in dignity, as 
the new law is superior to the old. So Christ, the 
founder of the new priesthood, having been called of 
God as Avas Aaron, called his successors, the apostles, 
and the apostles their successors, the bishops, trans- 
mitting to them, along with the authority of priests, the 
ordinary sacerdotal grace which they themselves had 
received from Christ. The bishops of the apostolic 
age have in their turn handed down the same grace to 
their successors, to the present time, by consecration 
or ordination."''" 

2. The power thus transmitted is twofold— a power 
oi order, and a power of jarisdictioii. The power of 
order is the power of immolating and offering Christ in 
the eucharist, as before explained and refuted. The 
power of jurisdiction is the power of judicial absolu- 
tion from guilt. The apostles received the first power 
at the institution of the supper ; the last, when Christ 
breathed on them after his resurrection, and said, 
'^Receive ye the Holy Ghost," etc. John xx. 22, 23. 
Cone. Trid. Sess. 14, c. 1. See Litton on the Church 
of Christ, pp. 531-2. 

3. The external instrument of transmission is the 
sacrament of orders, the administration of which be- 
longs to the bishop alone. The visible sign of the 
sacrament is the laying on of hands. The inward 

Christ and Aaron. Christ's priesthood admitted of no succession, and 
the words admit of no further application since his inauguration into 
office. In the case of the Aaronic priesthood, they were true of all his 
successors, because the succession was determined by Mrtli. Of this 
more hereafter. 

* See Litton on the Church of Christ, p. 530, et seq. 



72 ECCLESIOLOGY. 

effect is twofold : first, the impressing upon a soul of 
spiritual characUr or stamp, which is indelible, so that 
he who is once made a priest can never return to the 
condition of a layman ; and second, grace, not sancti- 
fying, but ministerial {(jvatia gratis clatcr) for the valid 
performance of sacerdotal functions. Cone. Trid. Sess. 
23, Can. 4. Litton, p. 532. 

This is a clear and consistent theory. If no sacra- 
ments and no absolution, then no church. If no law- 
ful priesthood, then no sacraments, at least no eucha- 
rist and no absolution. If no successors of the apos- 
tles, then no lawful priesthood. If not in communion 
with the bishop of Rome, no successors of the apostles. 
Hence, beyond the pale of Home, no covenanted 
grace. 

This tremendous doctrine (for if it be true, it is tre- 
mendously true, and if false, it is a tremendous lie) we 
propose to examine in the light of the Scriptures, of 
the papist's own principles, and of history. The re- 
sult of this examination will show that i\ie factoi such 
a succession is altogether incredible, and that It is the 
height of audacit}^ for any Roman priest of the present 
day to affirm that he knoics himself to be a true priest. 
The examination will be confined to the last of the 
above mentioned points, as the others have been 
sufficiently discussed in the preceding part of this 
article. 

1. The Scriptures make no mention anywhere of the 
'consecration of any church officers, as such. All be- 
lievers are priests, and are consecrated to the worship 
and service of God by the indwelling of the Holy 

* " (r. g. fZ. " the extraordinaiy gifts or charisms, bestowed for the 
edification of the whole church, o^Dposed to '' gratia gratum fdcieus,'" 
the gifts bestowed upon any one for his own salvation, faith, hope, 
&c. An unhappy terminology of the schoolmen, so far as it implies 
that all charisms are not gratuitously given. If the phrases are used 
at all, the first must describe the sovereign, benevolence of God as exhib- 
ited in all the charisms ; the second, the effect of this benevolence in 
making us " accepted " (^rra^as) in Christ. See Turretin^ L. III., Q. 
20, \ 8, of Carter's Ed. Vol. 1, p. 219. 



Apostolical Succession. 73 

Ghost, in any calling which the sovereign will of God 
may appoint for them. No word signifying consecra- 
tion is used of the appointment of church officers, as 
such. We shall not waste time in proving a negative. 
We defy papists and prelatists to produce a single 
example. 

2. The Scriptures make no mention of any ceremony 
of consecration to be used by church officers in con- 
secrating their successors. The papists will hardly 
insist on the imposition of hands, since the first instance 
of that W'C meet with in the New^ Testament in connec- 
tion with the ordination of church officers is in Acts 
vi., the case of the deacons. This was a case in 
which the hands of the apostles were laid on officers 
whom the people had elected ; and wdiat a horror the 
papists have of the people's electing their own officers 
everybody, know^s. Besides, the imposition of hands 
was so common among the Jew^s that nobody pretends 
that it ahoays meant consecration ; and the papists 
themselves use it in cases wdiere it is designed to have 
no such meaning'. It would seem certain, at least, 
that they attach no great importance to this ceremony 
in the sacrament of confirmation, though it be one of 
the three sacraments in which an indelible character is 
imparted. The Tridentine Catechism gives minute 
directions for the celebration of this sacrament : the 
unction of the forehead, the sign of the cross, the kiss 
of peace, and even the slap on the cheek, but says not 
a word about the imposition of hands. This is all the 
more strange, because the catechism refers to Acts 
viii. 14-17, in proof that the bishop alone has the 
power to administer this sacrament ; and yet in that 
passage it is expressly said that ''the apostles laid 
their hands on them and they received the Holy 
Ghost."^- 

* The Episcopal Church is here aUttle more consistent. It not only 
alleges the examj)le of the apostles, but follows it. Of course we do 
not admit that Acts viii. 14-17 has anything to do with ' ' conlirmation, " 
either sacrament or mere ceremony. 



74 ECCLESIOLOGY. 

3. The Scriptures make no mention of an indelible 
character in orders, any more than in baptism and con- 
firmation. That the papal body attaches some conse- 
quence to it wonld seem to be the case, from the fact 
that the Trent Council curses everybody who ventures 
to deny it. Sess. 23, Can. 4. Certain we are that any 
pious and intelligent man might read the New Testa- 
ment (and for that matter the Old too) without ever 
thinking of any indelible character.^'" Still, not think- 
ing about it is a different thing from denying it. Let 
us therefore examine Gabriel Biel, who flourished less 
than a century before the Trent Council, and was a 
great light in the Church of Rome. He expended a 
great deal of thought and of research upon this mys- 
tery, and his conclusion is thus summed up by Chem- 
nitz : + '' That the word character, in this sense, is found 
neither in the Scriptures, nor in the ancient ecclesias- 
tical writers ; that it is not found in the ' Master of the 
Sentences ' himself (Lombard) ; that as to the thing 
itself, neither the authority of the Fathers nor reason 
compels us to posit any such character; that the pas- 
sages adduced from Dionysius, Augustine, Damas- 
cenus, and Lombard in favor of the ' character,' are to 
be expounded rather of the sacrament of baptism 
itself, or of the sacramental form, than of any impress 
or stamp made in fact upon the soul ; that all the effects 
ascribed to the character may be explained as well 
without the character as with it; that the sacraments 
themselves work these effects without the character; 
that the things attributed to the character are found in 

* We beg pardon ; the Roman character is referred to in several 
places of the Kevelation. See xiii 16-17 ; xiv. 9, 11 ; xv. 2 ; xvi. 2, 
et al. The word is ydpayiia. Heb. i. 3 is the only place in which the 
word yo.pa/.Tr^p occurs. 

t Examen Concilii Tridentini, Sess. 7, p 28. This great w^ork is a 
storehouse of argument and history against the leading dogmas of 
Kome. See also Fra Paolo's Hist. G. of Trent, (Courayer French 
Trans.) Vol. I. pp. 438-'9, B. 2, § 86. 



Apostolical Succession. 75 

the eucharist, and in other sacraments, which are not sup- 
posed to imprint it ; that the chief reason Avhich weighed 
with the schoolmen for positing the character has httle 
force ; that the nnreiterableness of some of the sacra- 
ments does not depend npon the character, but upon 
the nature of these sacraments and the divine institu- 
fciou ; that it is less clear what the character is, than 
that baptism is not to be reiterated ; that the sole au- 
thority for it is a passage in the writings of Pope In- 
nocent III. (A. D. 1198-1216) ; that the passage is sus- 
ceptible of another interpretation: that a theologian 
ought not to lay down anything to be believed which 
is not necessary ex fide, et cet^ So far this great 
champion of Rome. It would appear, then, to use the 
language of the EdhiihaTgh JReview, that this character 
is ''a nonentity inscribed with a very formidable 
name — a very sujbstantial shadow." '' A.^ to the uhi of 
the character," says Dr. Campbell, "there was no less 
variety of sentiments — some placing it in the essence 
of the soul, others in the understanding ; some in the 
will, and others more i^lausihly in the imagination; 
others even in the hand and tongue ; but by the gen- 
eral voice the body was excluded. So that the whole 
of what they agreed in amounts to this : that in the 
unreiterable sacraments, as they call them, something, 
they know not what, is imprinted, they know not liov3, 
on something in the soul of the recipient, they know 
not ichere, which never can be delected." And yet 
we are adjudged to the everlasting pains of hell for 
not believing it. We are Avilling to share the damna- 
toin of Gabriel if he has been damned for not believing 
this. 

But what was the motive for postulating this myste- 
rious nonenity and the transmission of sacerdotal 
grace ? In answer, we quote the words of Litton (in 
the Ch, of Christ, pp. 534-537) : " Christianity [accord- 
ing to Rome], being the new law of Christ, must pre- 
sent the same general characteristics which its prede- 



76 EccLESioLoaY. 

cesser, the law of Moses, did. Now every lega.1 system 
of religion being necessarily of an artificial and arbi- 
trary character in its appointments, inasmuch as it in- 
tended to work from without iuAvards, and to produce 
the disposition which it does not find present, a law 
from without will regulate in detail all matters con- 
nected with divine worship, and especially will deter- 
mine the functions and persons of the sacerdotal order. 
The permanency of the external mould in which the 
worshipper is to be fashioned to religion being a prin- 
cipal object in every such system, the institution of the 
priestly order will be positive rather than natural : it 
will come from without, not spring from within. Moral 
qualifications for the ministerial office — such as wis- 
dom, or knowledge, or personal piety — will, under such 
a system, occupy a subordinate place, or rather, may 
be altogether dispensed with; the ►great object being 
to make provision for a visible succession of sacerdotal 
persons, Avho, whatever they may be inwardly, shall at 
least possess an official sanctity. Besides, it is obvious 
that no one can guarantee the transmission of moral 
endowments, natural or siDiritual. This object, the an- 
cient systems of religion — the Jewish among the num- 
ber — aimed at securing, and did in fact secure, by in- 
corporating in themselves the principle of caste ; that 
is, by attaching the priestly function to a certain tribe 
or family, separated for the purpose from the rest of 
the nation, and making it pass from father to son in 
tlie way of natural descent, irrespectively of moral 
qualifications. By this means the perpetual existence 
of a visible priesthood was secured; the only contin- 
gency, and that not a probable one, which could de- 
stroy the succession, being the extinction of the sacer- 
dotal tribe or family. An hereditary priesthood, the 
basis of the sacerdotal character being not the fitness 
of the individual, but the consecration of the caste, 
is the natural accompaniment of every system of re- 
ligion which aims at moulding men, by means of law 



Apostolical Succession. 77 

and discipline, into a specific type of religions senti- 
ment. 

''The Jewish priesthood was instituted on the prin- 
ciple just mentioned. The tribe of Levi was set apart 
to the ministry of the tabernacle, and out of it the family 
of Aaron to sacerdotal functions; and nothing more 
was necessary to qualify men for the priesthood than 
the legitimacy of birth and investiture with the sacred 
garments. It is obvious, that if anything analogous to 
this was to reappear under the Christian dispensation, 
it must undergo considerable modifications to render it 
less strikingly inconsistent with the general principles 
of the gospel ; it must put on a more spiritual form, 
and one capable of greater expansiveness. Particu- 
larly in one point a change was indispensable : a priest- 
hood propagating itself by natural descent would mani- 
festly be unfitted for the purposes of a religion, the pro- 
fessed aim of which is not, like Judaism, to be a train- 
ing school for one nation only, but to embrace all na- 
tions within its pale. The transmission therefore must 
be independent of race or tribe. It is in fact by thus 
modifying its aspect that Romanism is enabled to in- 
troduce the ministry of the law into the gospel. The 
principle of caste is retained ; but it appears under a 
new form better suited to Christianity. The powers 
which belonged to the sacred office are transmitted 
only in one line, and in that line they are transmitted 
independently of any moral qualification on the part of 
the recipient : only instead of priests by natural, we 
have priests by spiritual descent, the existing body of 
bishops possessing the power, in and by the sacra- 
ment of orders, of spiritually generating pastors for the 
church. As of old, so now, the legitimacy of the min- 
isterial commission depends exclusively upon the legiti- 
macy of the external succession, for the want of which 
no fulness of natural and spiritual endowment can com- 
pensate. Yet we are not to suppose that no internal 
grace accompanies the transmission of orders ; that a 



78 ECCLESIOLGY. 

priest becomes a priest solelj^ by the visible impo- 
sition of hands. Some concession must, as regards this 
point, be made to the general spirit of Christianity, 
and therefore it is added, that by the sacrament of or- 
ders, working like all the others ex opere ojjerato, grace 
is conferred; not, however, sanctifjdng grace, but the 
mystical grace of priesthood, grace for the valid per- 
formance of holy functions, which may exist equally 
in those who have saving faith in Christ, and in those 
who have not. Thvis a degree of inwardness is im- 
parted to what otherwise would be as purely external 
a matter as the succession of Eleazer to Aaron. Fi- 
nally, as the ancient priests were always priests, no 
one having it in his power to reverse his natural birth, 
so the spiritual stamp or impressed character, which is 
a consequence of ordination, forever distinguishes him 
who receives it from his brethren in Christ." 

The papal idea of ordination, as thus described, re- 
ceives no sanction from the word of God ; none from 
the Old Testament, much less from the New. Under 
the Old Testament the call of God determined the 
whole matter without the will of man. According to 
the papists, the will of man determines everything ; for 
the ''intention ' "^ of the officiating bishop or priest de- 
termines the question, whether tlie grace belonging to 
any sacrament shall be actuallj^ conferred or not. The 
external forms may be strictly canonical ; but who can 
tell, whether the licentious, cock-fighting, gambling 
priest intends to do the act which the church intends? 
The notorious want of reverence in papal priests — and 
the nearer Home the more notorious the want of rev- 
erence — makes it very probable that in thousands of 
instances of apparent baptism, or confirmation, or 
ordination, the sacrament was a practical jest: meant 
nothing and did nothing. The current of spiritual 
electricity met with an obstinate non-conductor, was 

* Concil. Trident., Sess. 7, Can. 11; and Chemnitz's Examen. 



Apostolical Succession. 79 

arrested and dissipated. Under the Old Testament, the 
extraordinary 23rovidence which was a leading feature 
of that dispensation, secured the family of Aaron from 
extinction ; and the genealogical registers secured the 
people from the imposture of pretenders. In Rome 
no man can be sure that his priest is not an imposter 
or intruder. 

Under the Old Testament there was no transmission 
of sacerdotal grace; and although the right of any 
man to be a priest was easily ascertained, no man's 
spiritual relations or spiritual state was made to de- 
pend upon the doings of the priest. The utmost wrong 
that could be done him was external, affecting his out- 
ward relations to the church. But these cruel reli- 
gion-mongers boast that one grand difference between 
the sacraments of the law and theirs, is, that the latter 
confer the grace which the former only signify 7" If, 
therefore, a poor soul goes to a priest who is no priest; 
or if a true priest does not happen (through ignorance, 
or malice, or drunkenness, or the spirit of jesting) to 
intend to do what the church intends, the salvation of 
that soul is put in extreme jeopardy! How different 
this hideous and cruel abomination from the merciful 
spirit of the gospel, which says, ^'Belieye in the Lord 
Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved." Blessed be 
God, who brought our fathers out of this ^'pitchy cloud 
of infernal darkness" into the sunlight of divine truth, 
where we can '' hear the bird of morning sing." Right- 
eous will be our doom if we allow ourselves to be ''re- 
involved" in that cloud again. 

When w^e compare this doctrine of sacerdotal grace 
with the teachings of the New Testament, the contra- 

* The Tridentine Catechism says that "the sacraments of the old law 
were instituted as signs only of those things which were to be accom- 
plished by the sacraments of the new' law." (On the Sacraments.) 
Let it be remembered that Kome holds that the sacraments not only 
confer grace, but that nothing can confer it without them, that they 
are necessary to salvation ; and the statements of the text are fully sus- 
tained and justified. 

7 



80 ECCLESIOLOGY. 

diction becomes glaring. First : Neither the term or- 
ders nor the term ordination'^ occurs in the New Testa- 
ment. It is a Uttle remarkable that a sacrament should 
have been instituted without a name and without a re- 
cord. We find there neither name nor thing. '' The 
word ordination is of all ecclesiastical terms the most 
purely secular in derivation. The word ordo^ from 
which the Latin verb ordinare is derived, was the tech- 
nical term for the senate or council to which, in the 
colonies and municipal towns of the Koman empire, 
the administration of local affairs was committed, and 
the members of which were called Decurio7ies. The 
correlative, therefore, to the oirlo was not the laity as 
distinguished from the priesthood, but the plebs or pri- 
vate citizens as distinguished from the magistracy. 
And in fact, the word ordinare is never used by the 
classical writers to signify consecration to a sacred of- 
fice. From the state it passed into the church, whence 
the frequent use in the early Latin fathers of the word 
2ylebs^ to denote the Christian people or laity, in contrast 
with the clergy. It is reasonable to suppose that when 
first introduced its ecclesiastical corresponded to its 
civil meaning, and that to be ordained, or to be in- 
vested with 'holy orders,' signified merely to be chosen 
a member of the governing body or presbyterj^ in a 

* It is hardly necessary to say that we do not refer to the EnglisJi 
words ordain or ordination, or to the idea of ordination in the general 
sense of appointing, constituting (see Titiis i. 5) ; but to the ceremony of set- 
ting apart a man to an office or a work. The word ordain occurs again in 
Acts xiv. 23 in our version, but there the Greek is different, ^etporo'^sr^, 
a Yerb which ' afterwards became a technical one in the Greek 
church to express ordination. But in the only other place where it 
occurs in the New Testament, 2 Cor. viii. 19, it is rendered by our 
translators "chosen." Comp. 1 Cor. xvi. 3; and this is a meaning, 
and apparently the chief meaning, assigned to it by Suidas, Hesychius, 
and Suicer. See Suicer's Thesaurns under the word. No doubt it 
came to be used of the act of ordaining because the election of officers 
preceded their ordination — election and ordination constituting vo- 
cation to office. So in the same way ytipo6=.aia. signified blessing 
{snAoyia) on account of the benediction which accompanied the lay- 
ing on of hands in certain cases. See Suicer sub verb. 



Apostolical Succession. 81 

Christian society ; no reference being intended to a 
specific grade of religious standing supposed to be 
thereby acquired. To transfer the notions which in 
later times became connected with ' ordination ' into 
the apostolic age, or the sacred narrative, is, the 
ready way to fall into serious errors of scriptural 
interpretation." "'^ 

Second : This account of the origin of the word falls 
in with the view of ordination as given in the New 
Testament. In every free commonwealth citizens are 
elevated to office because they have, or are supposed 
to have, a larger measure of the endowments which 
qualify for office than the body of their fellow-citizens. 
They are not elevated to a caste or rajik because they 
possess gifts which have been altogether denied to their 
fellow-citizens ; nor are they selected out of the mass 
as persons upon whom certain gifts are to he conferred 
in order to qualify them for office. t They are not sub- 
jected to a manipulation by which any indelible char- 
acter is to be imprinted, or any political grace im- 
parted. They are simply put into office, with or without 
solemn ceremonies, by the will of the body in which 
all political power resides, and to which all the politi- 
cal gifts and capacities of its members belong. The 
power resides in the body as to its heing ; in the offi- 
cers as to its exei'^cise.X In the human body the power 

* See Litton's Ghurch of Christ, p. 567, foot-note. Similar confusion 
and error have resulted from the like use of the terms heresy and 
schism^ the scriptural terms differing very widely in signification from 
the ecclesiastical. The Church of Eome, for example, has been re- 
markably free from the ecclesiastical sin of schism ; no community has 
been more guilty of the- sin of schism in the scriptural sense. How 
fatal has been the force and imposture of icords ! 

t Hence Paul lays down in the pastoral epistles (1 Tim. iii. and Titus 
i. ) the qualifications (the gifts) which are to guide the electors and the 
ordainers. The gifts, therefore, already exist before the ordination, and 
of course cannot be imparted by ordination. This one fact is fatal to 
the whole theory of orders as held by papists — and their apists. 

X This distinction was expressed in the schools by the terms in primo 
actu, or quoad esse, and in actu sectindo, or quoad operari. 



82 ECCLESIOLOGY. 

of vision may be said to belong, as to its hehig, to the 
body, but as to its actual exercise, to the eye. The body 
is the principiuin quod, the eye is the prhiciphwi quo. 
The body sees, but sees by the eye. The life of the 
body, is in every part and organ, and the life of the 
body controls the life in every part. The eye sees 
by the life of the hoAj, and sees under the control 
of the life of the body, and for the good of the body. 
The eye represents the bodj^ quoad seeing ; is in, not 
ove7\ the body for that purpose. So the commonwealth 
makes and administers the laws by the organs insti- 
tuted for that purpose. Its life is in the legislature, in 
the judiciary, in the executive, for the discharge of 
their respective functions. The civil officers in these 
various departments are in the commonwealth, not over 
it; they represent the commonwealth quoad these vari- 
ous functions, and the functions being performed by 
the life of the commonwealth are performed for its in- 
terests. Further, in every such commonwealth there 
are solemn ceremonies by which the fact of such re- 
presentation is formally recognized and published ; 
and when the officer ceases to hold the office and re- 
linquishes its duties, he ceases to be a representative, 
and falls back into the mass. 

Now, this is an exact account of what occurs in the 
church, imitato nomine, if only we allow for the diflfer- 
•ence between a free commonwealth which makes a 
constitution for itself and a free commonwealth which 
has its constitution made for it by Christ.^ It is in 
substance the view given by Paul in 1 Cor. xii., where 

*Tlie difference here signalized maj^ be made jplain by an illustra- 
tion. The constitution of a free commonwealth is "ordained" and 
established by the '' sovereign people'' assembled in convention. The 
election of persons to fill the offices created and defined by the consti- 
tution belongs to the people in a verj^ different sense, in the sense of 
"constituents." Hence an officer holdiug the office created by the 
constitution, or the sovereign people, is responsible to the i^eople in 
this sense, and not in the sense of his constituency. The old doctrine, 
therefore, of "instructions" was inconsistent with the very nature of 



Apostolical Succession. 83 

his avowed object is to state the relations of gifts in 
the church to the offices and functions discharged in 
it. He presents the same view also in Rom. xii. The 
gifts are given to the church as a body; the life is 
hers, the life of the Holy Ghost ; these gifts are given 
to be manifested and exercised for the profit of the 
whole body. The movement is from ivitJiin outwardly ; 
the organism effloresces in apostles, prophets, evangel- 
ists, pastors, teachers, deacons, etc. Compare Eph. 
iv. 4-16, in which exquisite description of the gifts and 
calling of the church, the introduction of the idea of 
priestly caste would be felt to be an intolerable imper- 
tinence.^ It is plain that the gifts and offices and offi- 
cers are all given to the church by her glorious Bride- 
groom; that in the oixler of nature, and even of time, 
she exists before them. She is the end, and they are 
the means. The powers of teaching, ruling, distribut- 

a representative, as Burke told tlie electors of Bristol. Now, the con- 
stitution of the cliurcli comes in no sense from the church. There is 
no sovereignty but in Christ her head. He ordains and establishes 
her constitution ; creates her offices ; and her officers, though elected 
and ''ordained" by the church, are not responsible to those who elected 
them, but to the Head, and to those courts which he has appointed 
to govern. The rulers in the church are rulers in her, not over her, 
as Paul hints to the elders at Ephesus. Acts xx. 28 ; in the Greek io 
c o)^ not ^. The eye is in the body for seeing, not over it. It is in 
a high, place, much higher than the foot, but still it is in the body, as 
the foot is, and both eye and foot have identically the same life. In 
Rome, the priesthood is over the body, and has a life of its own, dif- 
ferent from the life of the laity (or people of God), as the life of a 
shepherd is different from the life of the sheep whom he governs and 
shears. We ma}^ add, that it follows from the view given above, that 
both election and ordination, .while they express the judgment of the 
church, express the judgment of the church that Christ, the Head, 
has called the persons elected and ordained, by giving them the gifts 
of his Spirit. 

* "All office-bearers, and especially all such as are ordinary and per- 
petual, are given by Christ to his church ; and the church is not in any 
conceivable sense given to them. The personal ministry of Christ was 
surely not utterly barren. He had disciples before he had apostles; he 
had many, perhaps multitudes of followers, before the descent of the 
Holy Ghost- had fully anointed the apostles for their office and work ; 
and we are told that after his resurrection, and before his ascent into 



84 ECCLESIOLOGY 

ing, are her powers ; the gifts necessary for the exercise 
of these powers are Iter gifts ; the officers through Avhom 
she exercises them are her officers; they are her eyes 
and ears and hands and feet. The Ufe is the same in 
all : there is one spirit as well as one hocly. There is 
no room here for the distinction of clergy and laity (if 
those terms mean nothing more than the distinction 
between office-bearers and private members) ; every 
laic is a clergyman, because he belongs to the inherit- 
ance of God; and every clergj^man is a laic, because 
he belongs to the people of God. The simple state- 
ment of Paul is an overwhelming refutation of the pu- 
trid figment of sacerdotal orders and sacerdotal grace. 
The officers of the church are simply her representa- 
tives and organs quoad teaching, ruling, distributing, 
etc.; and "ordination" is simply a solemn ceremony 
by which the fact is recognized and authenticated. 

heaven, He was seen of above five hundred brethren at once. 1 
Cor. XV. 6. And of the vast crowds that followed him, and gladly 
heard him who spake as never man spake, who shall presume to say 
that multitudes did not believe on him ? To those alread}^ united with 
him hj faith, and to his elect throughout the earth and throughout all 
generations, he gave, after he had singly triumphed over death and 
hell, the inestimable gift of a living and i^ermanent ministry. But he 
had a church in the world before there was either apostle, or prophet, 
or evangelist, or pastor, or teacher; and he will have a church around 
him throughout eternal ages, after all his saints are gathered and per- 
fected, and whose oracles, ordinances, and ministry shall all have ful- 
filled their work His bride was equally his undefiled, his only one. 
before any ordinance was established, or any oracle given, or any 
ministry constituted, as she is now that we enjoy all these proofs of 
his care and love ; and if there had never been an office-bearer of the 
race of Adam given as a servant to minister unto her— if angels had 
been her only ministers forever, or the divine Spirit had disdained all 
secondary agencies, or were now to reject the whole body of sinful 
men, who are nothing but as he enables them — still that spotless bride 
would he the Lamb's wife by a covenant reaching from the depths of 
eternity, steadfast as the oath of God can make it, and sacred by the 
blojd of Jesus with which it is sealed. No, no; there is no lordship, 
no headship in Christ's church but that of Christ himself ; there are 
but servants in the church for Christ's sake ; and their Master's rule 
is this: 'Whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant; 
he that is greatest among you shall be your servant. ' " — R. J. Breck- 
enridge's Sermon on Eph. iv. 8. 



Apostolical Succession. 85 

Here is no grace transmitted from man to man ia a 
line of priests over the church and aljove it; the propa- 
gation of a hfe sej)arate and independent from that of 
the laitj-; bnt the very same grace, gifts, and life in 
the officers and in the body."^ 

As Christ is the head of the church, is the author of 
its constitution, and rules in it bj^ his Spirit, no mem- 
ber of the church can be made an officer except by a 
call from him, any more than that member could be a 
member except by his calling. It is Christ who con- 
fers the gifts which qualify for office, and this is done 
by the Holy Ghost who dwells in the whole church. 
It is Christ who creates the office and defines its func- 
tions and prescribes the qualifications for it. And yet, 
according to the A^ill of the same Lord and Head, the 
call to be an officer is not complete without the action 
of the church, any more than the call to be a member 
is complete without the action of the church. Hence 
vocation is both inward and outward ; and the outward 
consists of election t and ordination. Election is the 

* Since writing the above I have met with a passage in F. W. Krum- 
macher's autobiography (pages 159-168; which expresses the above 
views. See particnlaiij^ pages 164-'5. 

fXhat the people in the ancient church had the right of electing 
their bishops is so notorious that we are not aware of its being seriously 
denied by any respectable writer. Hooker {Gli. Polity^ B. 7, c, 14), 
after conceding the fact, goes on to vindicate the Church of England 
in denying this right to her people, upon the ground that changes of 
this sort must occur in the social development of a people, and appeals 
to the civil Jmtory of Rome^ and the changes that took place first in the 
republic and afterwards in the empire! What is this but virtually 
asserting that the church is a natural institution like the state, and 
that its life is merely natural ? Such a doctrine is natural in the min- 
ister of a church which was created by the state and is governed by it; 
but will be rejected with horror by every one who believes that Christ 
is the only King in his church, and that her constitution comes from 
him. The truth is, the dogma of apostolical succession is utterly in- 
compatible with any election of ministers by the people ; and one or 
the other must be abandoned. If anybody doubts that bishops were 
elected by the suffrages of the people in the ancient church, he may 
have his doubts fully removed by consulting Suicer's Thesaurus Ecde- 
siasticus, under the words 'i^-cVxorroc, ysifjonr^iw. and /^'.f)oz(r^ia. 
Down to the time of Nicolaus II. , who was made pontiff in 1058, the 



86 ECCLESIOLOGY. 

act of the body ; ordination the act of the rulers already 
existing, who have themselves been chosen in like 
manner; but both election and ordination are acts of 
the church, making the person chosen and ordained 
her representative or organ as to the particular func- 
tions to be performed. Election and ordination are 
therefore simply modes in which the divine calling is 
manifested and ascertained. The Spirit of Christ 
dwells in the man called, in the congregation electing, 
in the court ordaining; and when the presence and 
working of the Spirit is manifested in all these modes, 
the calling is as complete, and as completely authenti- 
cated as the present imperfect condition of the church 
will allow. Ordination imparts no authority, it only 
recognizes and authenticates it. The solemn ceremo- 
nies used in the inauguration of a president of the 
United States do not make him president (that has 
been alreadj^ done), but only recognize and authenti- 
cate the fact. It is not necessary that the oath of 
office should be administered by the outgoing presi- 
dent (upon the principle of like begetting like) ; it is 
sufficient that it be administered by an accredited 
organ and representative of the commonwealth. 

If this be a just view of the nature of ordination, it 
follows that ordination is not unreiterahle. The occa- 
sions for a reiteration of the ceremony may be, and 
commonly will bfe, very rare, but there is nothing in 
the nature of the thing to hinder its being reiterated. 
Paul and Barnabas were separated for the special work 

people of Rome still took part in electing the bishop of Rome. Nico- 
laus ordered that the cardinal bishops and the cardinal presbyters 
should elect the pontiff ; yet without infringing the established rights 
of the Roman [German] emperors in this business. At ths same time 
he did not exclude the rest of the clergy, nor the citizens and people 
from all part in the election; for he required that the assent of all 
these should be asked and obtained. It was not until the reign of 
Alexander IIL, more than a century afterwards, that the election of 
the pope was given exclusively to the college of cardinals. Moslieim^ 
Vol II. p 233. So long did this relic of the primitive doctrine linger 
after the ministry had been converted into a priesthood! 



Apostolical Succession. 87 

to which the Holy Ghost had called them, by prayer 
and fasting, and the laying on of the hands of the 
Presbj^tery at Antioch. And yet Barnabas had been a 
distingnished teacher before in that very church, and 
Saul had been made ''a chosen vessel to bear the 
name of Christ before kings, and the Gentiles, and the 
people of Israel," some time, according to some cliro- 
nologers many years, before. If it be said that this 
was not a case of "^ ordination," of setting apart to an 
office, bnt only of setting apart to a special work ; we 
answer, show ns an instance of any separation to an 
office as contradistingnished from a work in the New 
Testament. If John xx. 22, 23, be adduced as an in- 
stance, we answer that this was an ordination by the 
Lord himself, and not by the church. It is true that 
Home directs the bishop in the consecration of a priest 
to say, '^ Receive the Holy Ghost;" and the Episcopal 
church imitates Rome in one of its forms in the ''or- 
daining of priests" (at the same time mercifully pro- 
posing another form for men whose consciences are too 
tender to allow them to use the first) ; but this is done 
without any warrant from Christ, and, as it appears 
to us, is near akin to blasphemy. We hold that the 
ordination of the apostles was extraordinary, as their 
office was extraordinary ; and yet here is a case of the 
greatest of all the apostles having the hands of the or- 
dinary teachers in Antioch laid upon him. He takes 
his place along with Barnabas, Stephen the deacon, 
Timothy the evangelist or bishop, or legate a latere, 
or whatever he was ; Barnabas the teacher ; Saul the 
apostle ; all alike had hands laid on them, and were 
commended to the Lord for the work which he had 
for them to do. And if any of these illustrious men 
had quit their work and gone to money-making, and 
then returned to their work again, there could be no 
good reason why the hands of the Presb} tery should 
not have been laid upon them again. Or if Timothy 
had become a pastor of a congregation, there was no 



88 ECCLESIOLOGY. 

reason why he should not have been commended to the 
Lord to that new work, by prayer, fasting, and the im- 
position of hands. These things constitute the cere- 
monies of ordination ; and Sanl and Barnabas, who had 
been preaching for years, had these things done to 
them. Call it ordination or anything you please, it was 
a solemn act of obedience to the Holy Ghost, recogniz- 
ing his sovereign will in the choice of these men for a 
particular ecclesiastical work of preaching and ruling. 
And if there be anjthing more in ^^ ordination" than 
this, we have been unable to find it. 

Again, according to Eome, the bishop alone has the 
poAver to communicate this mysterious sacerdotal grace 
in orders. Now the New Testament knows nothing of 
the bishop as different in rank or order from the pres- 
byter or priest. The papal bishop is a pure invention 
of man or — the devil. The sacrament of orders there- 
fore falls to the ground, being founded on the bishop. 

Once more. There is no instance in the New Testa- 
ment, in which the act of ordaining was performed by 
one man. The college of apostles ordained the dea- 
cons ; the prophets and teachers laid hands on Bar- 
nabas and Saul ; the Presbytery laid hands on Timo- 
thy. No doubt the apostles and evangelists did some- 
times appoint or ordain elders, acting singly, when 
there was no existing presbytery to do the act. But 
the record makes it very clear that they preferred the 
other method where it was practicable ; just as in 
other acts of government, the apostles, though compe- 
tent to act each one by himself, preferred, when prac- 
ticable, to act jointly, or as an assembly. They did 
this, no doubt, to indicate the mode in which Christ 
would have his church to be governed in all. time, ''by 
the common counsel of the presbyters," to use Jerome's 
expression. 

The papists sometimes condescend to quote the 
Scriptures in proof of their peculiar doctrines. Their 
quotations generally have as little to do in fact 



Apostolical Succession. 89 

with their doctrines as the passage cited by a simple 
monk in proof of the scripturalness of the two orders 
of clergy, the regular and the secular, — ''the oxen were 
ploughing and the asses feeding beside them." But 
they find a passage (2 Tim. i. 6) which looks as if it 
might support their doctrine of ordination ; for here 
is ordination by one man, and the imparting of a gift 
by the imposition of his hands. Upon this passage 
we observe, (a), That if this was a case of ordination, 
then it was either the same with that mentioned in 1 
Tim. iv. 14, or a different one. If it was a different 
case, then Timothy was ordained at least tioice; and 
what becomes of the indelible character, and the doc- 
trine of the unreiterability of ordination ? If it was 
the same case, then what becomes of ordination by 
bishops alone (for the ordination here was by presby- 
ters)? Or if the Presbytery consisted of prelates, 
what becomes of the plenary authority of the apostle 
Paul? Was not his ordination sufficient to make 
Timothy a presbyter, or an evangelist, or even a pre- 
latical bishop ? If it is said that Paul condescended 
to be a bishop for the nonce ; we answer that he might 
have condescended still further (as his brother Peter 
did, 1 Pet. V. 1), to be a fellow-presbyter with his 
brethren, and act for and w^ith them in the presbytery 
in laying hands on Timothy. This, we have little 
doubt, is what actually occurred. (J), The gift that 
Timothy received by the laying on of the hands of 
Paul and the presbytery was the gift described by Paul 
in Eph. iii. 7, 8, as having been given to himself (per- 
haps by the laying on of the hands of the layman 
Ananias, Acts ix. 17-20). That it was no indelible 
character is evident from the fact that Timothy is ex- 
horted to '' stir it up " ; Paul uses a word which implies 
that the gift had descended like fire from heaven ; but 
that it was to be kept from going out, and to be in- 
creased by Timothy's care. It was a gift which mani- 
fested itself in ''reading, exhortation, teaching" (see 



90 ECCLESIOLOGY. 

1 Tim. iv. 13) ; was capable of being improved by 
these exercises, as well as by the ^' meditation " which 
was needful to perform them (vs. 15) ; and a gift in 
which '' his profiting might appear unto all." None of 
these things can be affirmed of the sacerdotal grace of 
the papist. It exists alike in the laziest and most dil- 
igent, in the vilest and the purest, in a Leo the Great 
and a Leo the Tenth. Whatever, therefore, this mys- 
tic grace may be, it is certainly a different thing from 
Paul's gift, or Timothy's. The ^'character" in Paul 
or Timothy would certainly have been ^'deleted" by a 
tenth or hundredth part of the wickedness which failed 
to delete it in John XXII. , or Alexander VI. 

Having thus said what we proposed to say upon the 
papal doctrine of succession in the light of the Scrip- 
tures, we proceed to consider it in the light of history 
and of the conditions of the doctrine itself. These 
two views of the subject we combine, as the history 
will show that the doctrine as stated by the papists 
cuts its own throat, and if that we are to believe it, we 
must first abnegate our own reason. There is good 
reason why these people do not like an appeal to 
reason. We are very apt to be against that which we 
feel to be against us. 

1. There is no such doctrine of succession as that 
of the Trent Council to be found in the first three cen- 
turies of the Church: we mean a doctrine involving a 
priesthood perpetuated by a process independent of 
the Christian people. Even the high -churchman 
Cyprian, in the middle of the third century, whose ex- 
travagant language concerning the priesthood and the 
episcopate, prelatists quote much oftener and with 
vastly more relish than they ever quote Peter or Paul, 
did not venture to deny the right of the people to have 
something to say in the creation of bishops and priests. 
The succession of the early fathers was a succession of 
doctrine, not of persons,^' except so far as persons were 

* See Gerhard's Loc. Theology, Loc. 23, Chap. XL Sec. 5, cxcii., 



Apostolical Succession. 91 

involved in tlie doctrinal succession. Tliey seem to 
have been led to assert such a succession by a claim 
of this sort made by the heretics, who, finding the 
writings of the apostles against them, pretended to 
have a tradition of the apostles in their favor. Thus 
TertuUian, in his book De prmscriptionihiis adversits 
hcereticos, urges the true succession against the false."" 
'^ Let them parade the origins of their churches, let them 
unroll the series of their bishops, so coming down by 
succession from the beginning, that the first bisliop had 
some one of the apostles, or a disciple of the apostles, 
as his ordainer and predecessor. Let the heretics in- 
vent a figment of this sort, yet it will profit them no- 
thing ; for their very doctrine will convict them, when 
compared with the doctrine of the apostles, by its di- 
versity and contrariety ; for as the apostles did not 
teach contrary to one another, so apostolic men would 
not have taught contrary to the apostles." TertuUian's 
idea of the succession was not at all that of a priest- 
hood whose function it w^as to offer sacrifice and pro- 
nounce authoritative absolution ; but the succession of 
men in certain chitrches which, having been founded 
by the apostles or by their disciples, were called 
"sedes apostolicse," or sees of the apostles, and were 
supposed to have a prescriptive right to say what the 
apostolical teaching really was. 

This was indeed a very unsafe rule. It was not the 
rule given in the Scriptures. *The spirits ought to have 
been tried by the Holy Spirit speaking in his word, 
and specially by the great fundamental doctrines of the 
word, as prescribed by John in his First Epistle, chap, 
iv. ; but this rule was not deemed sufficiently easy, and 
yet it seems easy enough. " Whosoever transgresseth, 
and abideth not in the doctrine of Christ, hath no God. 
If there come any unto you, and hring not this doctrme, 

Vol. XI. p. 297, ff. Note particularly the quotations from the Fathers 
in cxciii. and ff. 

* TertuUian, depress, adv. hseretic. apud. Turretin, L. 18, Q. 13. 
8 



92 ECCLESIOLOGY. 

receive him not into your house, neither bid him God- 
speed." (2 John ix. 10.) But men were wiser than 
God, and in order to extinguish heresy and prevent 
schism, invented the Cathohc doctrine and made com- 
munion with the bishop the mark of orthodoxy. But 
in the whole business the trxitli Avas the thing aimed 
at, not sacramental grace or sacramental salvation. 
They inverted the proper order, and instead of judging 
the man or the church by the faith, ^^^J judged the 
faith by the man or the church. The 3'esults of this 
inversion have been deplorable; but these ancient 
worthies ought to be acquitted of the sin and silliness 
involved in the modern doctrine of the succession. 

That this view of the position of the ancient church 
is the true one, is evident from the Donatist contro- 
versy. It is well known that there was no diiference be- 
tween the Donatists and ''the church," either in faith 
or order. Both were orthodox ; both were episcopal. 
There was no question made by the church, whether 
the Donatist communion was a church, a part of the 
church visible on earth. Members coming to the church 
from the Donatists were not re-baptized; but more 
than this, ministers coming from them to the church 
were not reordained. Not only was this the case in the 
early stages of the great controversy, but even as late 
as the conference at Carthage, just one centurj" from 
the death of Mensurius, which was the original occa- 
sion of the strife, the Catholics offered to acknowledge 
the bishops of the Donatists. Even the Synod of Rome 
offered to hold communion with them.'^ The Catholic 

* See these positions fully established by Claude in his Defence of 
the Reformation^ p. 3, chap. 4. Chillingworth takes the same view of 
this controversj^ He quotes from an epistle of Augustine these words : 
'' You (the Donatists) are with us in baptism, in the creed, and the 
other sacraments"; and again: "Thou hast proved to me that thou 
hast faith ; prove to me likewise that thou hast charity." Parallel to 
which words are those of Optatus : "Amongst us and you is one ec- 
clesiastical conversation, common lessons, the same faith, the same 
sacraments. " Where, by the way, we may observe, that in the judg- 



Apostolical Succession. 93 

Church in fact stood on the defensive in this whole war, 
as an}^ man can see by simply glancing over the writ- 
ings of Augustine against the Donatists ; it Avas simply 
defending its own right to be a chnrch against a nar- 
row-minded and fanatical sect which claimed to be the 
only church in the world ; it was occupying exactly the 
position in reference to the Donatists which we now oc- 
cupy towards Rome and its imitators. The Catholics 
of that day had sense and charity enough not to follow 
the example of the Donatists, and unchurch all other 
communions but their own. It is very evident that they 
did not have, or did not know that they had, the apos- 
tolical succession. Otherwise, the argument would 
have been short, sharp and decisive. In that case the 
church which had defied the powxr of the Roman em- 
perors for three hundred years, might have been saved 
the disgrace of invoking the authority of the emperors to 
decide the controversy by arbitration and by the sword. 

ment of these fathers, even Donatists, though heretics and schismat- 
ics, gave true ordination, the true sacrament of matrimony, the sacra- 
mental absolution, confirmation, the true sacrament of the eucharist, 
true extreme unction ; or else (choose you whether) some of these were 
not then esteemed sacraments. But for ordination, whether he 
(Augustine) held it a sacrament or no, certainly he held that it re- 
mained with them entire ; for so he says in express terms in his book 
against Parmenianus's Epistle. Which doctrine, if you can reconcile 
with the present doctrine of the Koman church, eris milii magnus 
Apollo:' {Ghillingicorth's Works, p. 506, 507 of Phila. Ed., 1840.) 

The learned Witsius {De ScMsm. Donatistarum, Chap. 7) says that he 
had read, '^non sine magno tmdio:' the Bremculum of Augustine and 
the Acts of the Conference of Carthage (A. D. 411), and gives this as 
the main question disputed between the two hundred and eighty -six 
Catholic bishops and the two hundred and seventy-nine Donatist 
bishops assembled at the conference (held, be it remembered, a 
century after the breaking out of the schism), viz.: "Whether the 
church which held communion with Caecilian, the Traditor, had 
not thereby lost the dignity and privileges of a church ? The contro- 
versy, therefore, was two-fold : 1, First, of fact ; whether C. was a 
traditor, and on that account unworthy of the episcopate ? 2, Second, 
of law ; whether a church is so vitiated by an admixture of the wicked, 
as to cease to be a church?" This is a very different question from 
that which would have been discussed, if they had been disputing 
about the succession. It was indeed the same question which was af- 
terwards debated between the Anabaptists and their antagonists, both 
Bomanist and Protestant. 



94 ECCLESIOLOGY. 

2. The papists are in the habit of imposing upon 
people, by saying that the salvation of Protestants, like 
their faith, rests upon fallible and uncertain grounds, 
and that certainty can be found only within their 
pale. Now, not to say that this assertion comes with a 
bad grace from a community which teaches in its creed 
that no man can be certain of his salvation in this life ; 
it has been shown, over and over again, that their own 
doctrine of the priesthood and the sacraments makes it 
impossible for any man to know that he has ever been 
truly absolved from his sins ; and this because of the 
uncertainty of the succession as a fact. That the sac- 
rament of penance has ever been duly administered to 
him, depends upon the minister's being a true priest. 
" That such or such man is a priest," says Chilling worth, 
^'not himself, much less any other, can haA'e any possi- 
ble certaintj^ ; for it depends upon a great manj" con- 
tingent and uncertain supposals. He that will pretend 
to be certain of it, must undertake to know^ for certain 
all these things that follow : 

"'First, that he was baptized with due matter. 
Secondly, wdth the due form of words, which he can- 
not know, unless he were both present and attentive. 
Thirdly, he must know that he was baptized with due 
intention,^'" and that is, that the minister of his baptism 
was not a secret Jew, nor a Moor, nor an atheist (of all 
which kinds, I fear, experience gives you a just cause 
to fear that Italy and Spain have priests not a few), 
but a Christian, in heart as w^U as profession (other- 
wise, believing the sacrament to be nothing, in giving 
it he could intend to give nothing), nor a Samosatanian, 
nor an Arian, but one that was capable of having due 
intention, from which they that believe not the doc- 
trine of the Trinitj^ are excluded by j- ou. And lastly, 
that he was neither drunk nor distracted at the admin- 
istration of the sacrament, nor, out of negligence or 

* See the speech in the Council of Trent, of Catharine, bishop of Mi- 
nori, in F. Paolo's Hist. (Courayer's French Trans. )» Vol. I. pp. 4:4:l-'2. 



Apostolical Succession. 95 

malice, omitted his intention. Fourthly, he must un- 
dertake to know that the bishop which ordained him 
priest ordained him completely, with due matter, form, 
and intention ; and, consequently, that he again was 
neither Jew, Moor, nor atheist, nor liable to any such 
exception as is inconsistent with due intention of giving 
the sacrament of orders. Fifthly, he must undertake to 
know that the bishop which made him priest was a 
priest himself ; for your rule is nihil d<it quod non 
habet ; and, consequently, that there were again none of 
the former nullities in his baptism, which might make 
him incapable of ordination, nor any invalidity in his 
ordination, but a true priest, to ordain him again, the 
requisite matter and form and due intention all con- 
curring. Lastly, he must pretend to know the same of 
him that made him priest, and him that made him 
priest even until he comes to the very fountain of 
priesthood. For, take any one in the whole train and 
succession of ordainers, and suppose him, by reason 
of any defect, only a supposed and not a true priest, 
then, according to your doctrine, he could not give a 
true, but only a supposed priesthood ; and they that re- 
ceive it of him, and again they that derive it from 
them, can give no better than they received ; receiving 
nothing but a name and shadow, can give nothing but 
a name and shadow ; and so from age to age, from gen- 
eration to generation, being equivocal fathers beget 
only equivocal sons; no principle in geometry being 
more certain than this, that the unsuppliable defect of 
any necessary antecedent, must needs cause a nullity 
of all those consequences which depend upon it. In 
fine, to know this one thing, you must first know ten 
thousand others, whereof not any one is a thing that 
can be knoAvn, there being no necessity that it should 
be true, which necessity alone can qualify any thing to 
be an object of science, but only, at the best, a high 
degree of probability that it is so. But then, that of 
ten thousand probables no one should be false ; that 



96 ECCLESIOLOGY. 

of ten thousand requisites, whereof any one may fail, 
not one should be wanting ; this to me is extremely im- 
probable, and even cousin-german to impossible. So 
that the assurance hereof is like a machine composed 
of an innumerable multitude of pieces, of which it is 
strangely unlikely, but some will be out of order, and 
yet if any one be so, the whole fabric of necessitj^ falls 
to the ground ; and he that shall put them together, 
and maturely consider all the possible ways of lapsing 
and nullifying a priesthood in the church of Bome, I 
believe will be very inclinajble to think, that it is a hun- 
dred to one, that amongst a hundred seeming priests, 
there is not one true one — nay, that it is not a thing 
very improbable, that amongst those many millions 
which make up the Eoman hierarchy, there are not 
twenty true." (Cliillingwortli s ^S^orks, p. 130-'2; Hook- 
er, Phila., 1840.) 

''Whether," saj'S Macaulay in his review of Glad- 
stone's "Church and State'' {Mucellanies, Vol. III. p. 
300), ''a clergyman be reallj" a successor of the apos- 
tles depends on an immense number of such contin- 
gencies as these : Whether under King Ethelwolf , a 
stupid priest might not, while baptizing several scores 
of Danish prisoners, Avho had just made their option be- 
tween the font and the gallows, inadvertently omit to per- 
form the rite on one of these graceless proselytes ? — 
whether, in the seventh century, an impostor, who had 
never received consecration, might not have passed him- 
self off as a bishop on a rude tribe of Scots? — whether 
a lad of twelve did really, by a ceremony huddled over 
when he w^as too drunk to know what he was about, 
convey the episcopal clmracter to a lad of ten?" 

Mr. Gladstone proposes to remove doubts which 
may arise from the historic difficulties against the doc- 
trine of succession, by nothing else than mathematical 
evidence. "By a novel application of the theory of 
ratios and proportion, he endeavors to show that, on 
the least favorable computation, the chances for the 



Apostolical Succession. 97 

true consecration of any bishop are 8,000 to 1. . . . 
Be it so • tliis only diminishes the probabihty that, m 
any ffiven case, -the suspicion of invahdity is un- 
founded. What is wanted is a criterion which shall 
distinguish the gemiAne orders from the q)ai tms Alas ! 
who knows but he may be the unhappy eighth-thou- 
sandth? According to this theory, no man m the 
Eofnan or Anglican communion has a right to say that 
he is commissioned to preach the gospel, but only 
that he has seven thousand nine hundred and ninety- 
nine eight-thousandth parts of certainty that he is! 
A fehcitous mode of expression, it must be confessed^ 
What would be the fraction for expressing the ratio ot 
probability, on the supposition that simony, heresy, or 
infidehty, can invahdate holy orders is, considering the 
history of the middle ages, far beyond our arithmetic ' 
"We can imagine," says the same lively writer, "the 
perplexity of a presbyter thus cast in doubt as to 
whether or not he has ever had the invaluable gitt 
of apostolical succession conferred upon him. As that 
gift is neither tangible nor visible, the subject neither 
of experience nor consciousness, as it cannot be 
known by any 'effects' produced by it, he may 
imagine— unhappy man!— that he has been 'regener- 
ating' infants by baptism, when he has been simply 
sprinkling them with water. 'What is the mattei-? 
the spectator of his distractions might ask. 'What 
have you lost ? ' ' Lost! ' would be the reply, ' I fear 
I have lost my apostoHcal succession ; or rather, my 
misery is that I do not know and cannot tell whether 
I ever had it to lose.' It is of no use here to suggest 
the usual questions, ' When did you see it last ? When 
were you last conscious of possessing it ? What a pe- 
culiar property is that of which, though so invaluable, 
nay, on which the whole efficacy of the Christian min- 
istry depends, a man has no positive evidence to show 
whether he ever had it or not ! which, if ev er conferred, 
* Edinburgh Bemew, for April, 1843, P. 271. Amer. Eeprint. 



98 ECCLESIOLOGY. 

was conferred without liis knowledge; and which, if it 
could be taken away, wonld still leave him ignorant, 
not only when, where, and how the theft was com- 
mitted, but whether it had ever been committed or not! 
The sympathizing friend might probably remind him, 
that as he was not sure he had ever had it, so perhaps 
he still had it without knowing it. 'Perhaps!' he 
would reply, 'but it is certainty I want.' 'Well,' it 
might be said, 'Mr. Gladstone assures you, that, on 
the most moderate computation, your chances nre as 
8,000 to 1 that you have it.' 'Pish!' the distracted 
man would exclaim, 'What does Mr. Gladstone know 
about the matter ? ' And truly to that query we know 
not well what answer the friend could make." 

It thus appears that there is no historical evidence 
for the succession; and that no man can be certain 
that he is a presbyter or priest upon this theory. This 
baseless theory is that upon which wretched men, tra- 
velling to the bar of God and the retributions of eter- 
nity, are invited to rest their hope of salvation, instead 
of resting it upon Jesus Christ, the Saviour of sinners, 
freely offered to them in the gospel! Blessed is he 
who can say, in spite of all the cavilling of Pharisees, 
cavilling about the uncanonical method of his salva- 
tion : "One thing I know^, that whereas I was blind, 
now I see!" Blessed is he who gets his healing di- 
rectly from the Great Physician, without the manipu- 
lations of those who sit, or imagine that they sit, in 
Moses' seat! No wonder that the world is infidel Avlien 
such a doctrine, without evidence and against all evi- 
dence, is preached to them. A man must denude him- 
self of his rational nature before he can believe it. 

The doctrine was invented, not for the glorifying of 
Christ, but for the glorifying of the clergy. Great is 
the contrast between the apostles and their pretended 
successors. "The former are intent, almost exclusively 
intent, on those great themes which render the gospel 
^glad tidings;' the latter, almost as exclusively, in 



Apostolical Succession. 99 

magnifying their office. The former absokitely forget 
themselves in their flocks ; the hotter well nigh forget 
their flocks in themselves. The former, if they touch 
on the clerical office at all, are principally intent on its 
spiritual qnalifications and duties; the latter, on its 
prerogatives and powers. To hear these men talk, 
one would imagine that, by a similar 'jcrrerjo]^ tzoozsoov, 
with that of the simple-minded monk who 'devoutly 
thanked God that in his wisdom he had always placed 
large rivers near large towns,' they supposed the church 
of Christ to be created for the sole use of the clergy ; 
and the doctrine of ' apostolical succession ' to be the 
Jinal cause of Christianity." — Edinburgh Hevieic, April, 
1843, page 292. 

The whole system to which this doctrine belongs is 
a substitute for Christianity, whose chief glory is its 
spiritual and moral character. It substitutes " for a 
worship founded on intelligent faith, a devotion which 
is a species of mechanism, and rites which operate as 
by magic. The doctrine of apostolical succession itself 
is neither more nor less respectable than that of the 
hereditary sanctity of the Brahminical caste ; while the 
prayer-mills of the Tartars afford a fair illustration 
of the doctrine of sacramental efficacy." It is sheer 
heathenism. 

What is Christianity if it be not a method of salva- 
tion through Jesus Christ, to be received through faith ? 
Justification by faith alone is its fundamental arti- 
cle; the "articidiis stcmtis aid cadentis ecclesicey What 
is heathenism but the attempt to appease an angry 
God by human works, or by human ordinances effica- 
cious ex ojjere ojperato f The system to which the apos- 
tolical succession belongs can never consist with 
the doctrine of justification by faith alone in Jesus 
Christ. The preaching of this latter doctrine led Luther 
necessarily to a rejection of the papal theory of the 
church and the priesthood; and it was because the 
papal priests saw that tJieir craft was in danger from 



100 ECCLESIOLOGY. 

the preaching of this doctrine that they set themselves 
so resolutely to overthrow it. If a sinner can lay hold 
on Christ freelj^ offered to him in the gospel, and ob- 
tain the forgiveness of sins and acceptance with God ; 
if he can have immediate access to Christ, the great 
High Priest over the house of God, and can ''draw 
near with a true heart in full assurance of faith," what 
need for an earthly priesthood and its sacramental 
magic ? Ilinc illce lacrymm. The priests had no tears 
to shed over the damage done to holiness by the doc- 
trine of the reformers. They Avould have been '' croco- 
dile tears," indeed, if shed by such men, men who had 
become notorious and infamous all over Europe for 
their immorality.^ No! they knew that their power 
over men's souls, bodies, and estates was gone, if this 
doctrine came to be believed. 

We add something on the doctrine of succession as 
held by some in the church of England, and in the 
Protestant Episcopal Church in America. 1. If these 
people have any ''succession," they have derived it 
from the Church of Rome ; and as the succession in 
Home has been shown to be a grand imposture, from 
the Scriptures, reason and history, and Home, could 
give no better orders than she had herself — of course 
the succession in the Church of England is an impos- 
ture also. 2. The imposture is not grand in the last 
case, for the simple reason that all that makes tlie fig- 

* As to the moral complexion of papal councils, and especially of the 
Council of Trent, the following words of a nervous writer, who was a 
perfect master of the papal history, cannot be considered too strong : 
" Beleaguered by strumpets, beset with fiddlers and buffoons, cursing 
God's truth, and leaving tracks strewed with bastards and dead men's 
bones! Holy councils; and above all, that of Trent! Which, by the 
amazing wrath of God, cursed with judicial blindness and seared con- 
sciences, did gather into one vast monument those scattered proofs 
which covered the long track of ages, and those errors and corruptions 
bred in the slime and filth of the whole apostasy; and reared them up, 
with patient and laborious vice, through eighteen years of God's long- 
suffering, the final landmark, the last limit of his endurance with this 
great, bloody, and drunken Babylon. ''—Spirit of the ^Nineteenth Cen- 
tury, 1842, page 254. 



Apostolical Succession. 101 

ment worth asserting or defending has been given up, 
to wit, the priestly character and the sacrifice. • It is 
the play of Hamlet with the part of Hamlet left out. 
Without the assertion of some sacramental virtue im- 
parted by the bishop's hands to the presbyter, and 
some sacramental virtue imparted by the priests' ma- 
nipulations to the laity, the pretence to the apostolical 
succession is of all pretences the emptiest and the 
silliest. Hence we find that a revival of zeal for this 
dogma is generally followed very soon by the doctrine 
of sacramental grace. There is a necessary connection 
between the two, and they cannot long be separated. 

3. We may be excused from believing the doctrine as 
held by Anglicans and their American imitators, so 
long as they show so little faith in it themselves. If 
they believed it, they could not help seeing that they 
are what Rome pronounces them to be, schismatics, 
and in no better condition than us poor ^'Dissenters." 
Let them show their faith by their works, and we 
shall be more disposed to consider their pretensions. 

4. The advocates of this dogma in the Church of Eng- 
land would do well to prove that the church they be- 
long to is a church at all. According to Home, a 
bishop who is made so by the appointment of the civil 
magistrate has a very doubtful claim to the title. In 
the thoroughly Erastian establishment of England, the 
whole constitution of the church is the work of the 
state, and the people even pray by '' Act of Parlia- 
ment." The sacramental virtue, which makes bishops 
and priests, comes at the suggestion, at least, of the 
civil ministry. This accounts for the total absence of 
discipline in that church. It is exceedingly difficult, 
if not impossible, to get rid of a bishop who avows 
himself an infidel. It is not a very broad caricature 
of the '^Comedy of Convocation," to represent that 
venerable body as debating the question, whether a 
member of the Church of England may deny the ex- 
istence of God without losing his standing as a mem- 



102 ECCLESIOLOGY. 

ber. 5. This doctrine is not tauglit in the formularies 
of the Church of England; nor is it held by very many 
of her best ministers and her highest ornaments. Chil- 
lingworth certainly did not hold it, and yet he had for 
his '' God-father," no less a man than William Laud, 
Archbishop of Canterbury, by whose influence, in 
great measure, the strayed son was brought back from 
the fold of Kome into the Church of England again. 
Bishop Butler, we imagine, did not hold it. It would 
have been odd, indeed, if such a thinker as the author 
of the '* Analogy " had believed such a conglomeration 
of absurdities; more especially as he had been baptized 
and brought up in a Presbyterian fold. Archbishop 
Whately not only did not believe it, but showed clearly, 
in his EsHctys on the Kingdom of Christ, that the thing 
is absurd. " There is not," says he, " in all Christen- 
dom a minister Avho is able to trace up, with any ap- 
proach to certainty his own spiritual pedigree." The 
fathers and founders of the Church of England did 
not believe it, as has been proved against the writers 
of the Oxford Tracts."^'' How could men believe it, who 
had so clear a view of the only priesthood and the 
only sacrifice of Christ? — men, who were asking the 
advice, continually, of Calvin and other Presbyterians 
of the Continent ? No ! the really great men of the 
Anglican Church, whose worth was real and conspic- 
uous, had no need of insisting upon a sacramental 
virtue which is invisible, intangible, inoperative, mani- 
festing itself to no power of perception, either of the 
body or mind; which, if a man has, he is none the 
better; which, if he has not, he is none the worse. t 

*See in the Presbyterian Review for January, 1886, testimonies and 
references to to show that, down to the time of Charles I. and Laud, 
Presbyterian ordination was considered valid in the church of Eng- 
land. (Pp. 119-'20 of the above number of the Eevieio .) 

fSee Princeton Review for 1842, pp. 139, et seq. 



Is THE Church of Eome a True Church? 103 



Is THE Church of Rome a True Church of Christ? 

[Turretin, L. 18, q. 14 ; Thornwell's Writings, III. pp. 283 ff. ; Conf. of 
Faith, Chapter XXV.] 

1. State of the question: Not whether the church of 
Rome of the apostle's time, nor of the second, third, or 
fourth century, but the church of Home since the 
Trent Council, is a church of Christ. Nor is it about the 
church of Rome generally considered, as contradistin- 
guished from Mohammedanism, Judaism, Paganism, but 
particularly as subject to the pope as the head thereof. 

2. Proofs that it is not a church of Christ : (1), From 
the design of the yisible church, which is to glorify 
God in the ingathering and upbuilding of the elect. 
Any church whose constitution is such, or whose ad- 
ministration is such that the tendency, on the whole, is 
not to save men, but to destroy them, is not a church 
of Christ. This is conceded virtually by Rome her- 
self, in insisting, as she does, that there is no possi- 
bility of salvation out of her communion, because she 
is the only true church. Is, then, the prevailing ten- 
dency of Rome and her ordinances a tendency to sal- 
vation ? I say prevailing tendency. Men may be con- 
verted within her pale, no doubt ; and men may be 
converted in an infidel club, or in a theatre, or in a cir- 
cle of boon companions ; but in spite of the tenden- 
cies, as is evident from the fact that, as soon as they 
are born again, the atmosphere of such society becomes 
stifling to their new life, and they quit it as soon as 
possible. '^Come out of her, my people," etc. Now, 
that the tendency of Rome is not saving, but damning, 
is evident from the fact that she has not " the minis- 
try, oracles, and ordinances" which God has given to 
the church visible for this end. Of these in their order : 

(a), Ministry. Contrast the hierarchy with the offi- 
cers of the apostolic church. The people disfranchised 
and ground to pieces by the great iron wheel. The 
names they have retained, those of bishojp, presbyter, 
9 



104 ECCLESIOLOGY. 

and deacon, but how totally different the nature of the 
offices. Neither bishop nor presbyter is a preacher of 
the gospel, but a priest ; and, when consecrated, the 
priest has given to him, not a Bible as the symbol of 
his office, but the cup and. paten, with authority to 
offer sacrifice, and that, too, sacrifice of the body and 
blood of the Son of God, for the sins of the living and 
the dead : thus exercising an office totally different 
from that of the minister of the word, whose commision 
w^as, "Go ye into all the world and preach the glad tid- 
ings," etc. The minister is no priest in the literal sense, 
for Christ is the only priest ; he is not the only priest 
in the tropical sense, for all God's people are priests, 
a royal priesthood. The Roman priesthood, therefore, 
is at once the denial of the priesthood, both of Christ 
and of his people. The bishops are no spiritual rulers, 
chosen of God, through the voice of the people, and 
administering the law of Christ, but the tools of a des- 
potism which consults only the demands of the lusts of 
power and gold, and using heaven and hell as the 
sanctions of their anti-christian tyranny. To crown 
all, the pope is antichrist, setting himself in the place 
of Christ (and therefore against him), as prophet, priest 
and king, and head over all things to the bodj^ the 
church — lording it over God's heritage, instead of be- 
ing a helper of their joy. Even the ambitious Pontiff, 
Gregory I., in the close of the sixth century, pro- 
nounced the claim to be universal bishop blasphem- 
ous, infamous and a mark of antichrist. 

(J), Oracles, This includes not only the Rule of 
Faith, but the authorized and current interpretation of 
the rule. Under this head observe, {ci), That she has 
added to the rule which God has given ; (5), That in the 
interpretation of the rule, she makes the part which 
God has given bend to the part she herself has added ; 
thus acting in contradiction to the example of the apos- 
tles who, when adding to the rules of the Old Testament 
under their commission from God as inspired, still 



Is THE Church of Eome a True Church ? 105 

quote everywliere the Old Testament, to show that 
their teaching was in harmony with the Old Testament 
— that their religion was not new, but as old as the 
garden of Eden ; (c), That she denies the rule to her 
members, upon the pretence that the church alone has 
the right to interpret; thereby practically denying faith 
and repentance to the people, and damning them; 
thereby shutting out the Holy Ghost, and usurping his 
office as the infallible witness of Christ. Eome decrees 
that God shall not speak to men except through the 
atheists, adulterers and murderers that sit in the seat 
on the Seven Hills, and claiming to be gods and wor- 
shipped as gods; (d), That the creed thus derived, 
from the infallible interpretation of the church, is not 
a saving creed. Not that it formally denies all the fun- 
damental doctrines of the gospel, but teaches so much 
of error, and such kind of error, as to make the creed, 
as a whole, poison and not food. The sum of the 
teachings of Scripture, concerning the plan of salva- 
tion, is contained in 1 John v. 8 — the three-fold record 
of the Spirit, the water and the blood. The two last 
are emblematical of the two great divisions of the Re- 
deemer's work — a change of state and a change of char- 
acter — justification and sanctification. The Spirit's tes- 
timony being the mode by which these blessings be- 
come the property of the sinner. As to the blood, it 
can be shown that Eome is fundamentally heretical. 
Paul teaches that no creed which teaches salvation by 
works can be a saving one. But Eome teaches such a 
creed, resolving our justifying righteousness into per- 
sonal holiness,, damning the doctrine of imputation, 
audaciously proclaiming the of figment of human 
merit, both of congruity and condignity, making 
Christ only the remote and ultimate cause of pardon 
and acceptance. As to the water, she makes holiness 
impossible bj' denying the blood. Pardon is essential 
to holiness, and Eome, in denying the possibility of 
pardon, denies the possibiUty of holiness. She is also 



106 



ECCLESIOLOGY. 



antinomian^ expunging one of the commandments of 
the decalogue, and making a hypocritical will-worship 
to take the place of holy obedience. She is an idola- 
trous church. As to the Spirit^ she is a Pelagian, or, at 
the very best, a semi-Pelagian. 

(e). Ordinances. The most of her ordinances are of 
her own invention ; but even of those which God has or- 
dained, she has changed utterly their nature and their 
use^ so that they are no longer the ordinances of God. 
Baptism, the Lord's supper, ordination, are changed 
materially and formally. As to the use, her notion of 
the efficacy of the sacraments denies the agency of the 
Spirit, and makes them causes or lav:s of grace instead 
of means. So that no sinner believing the creed of 
Rome and obeying the laws of Rome, can possibly be 
saved. She is, therefore, no church of Christ. 



The Nature and Extent of Chuech Powee. 

1. The church may be considered either as to its 
essence or being, or as to its power and order, when 
it is organized. As to its essence or being, its constit- 
uent parts are its matter and form, 

2. Bj' the matter of the church is meant the persons 
of which the church consists, with their qualifications ; 
by WiQ form, the relation among these persons, as or- 
ganized into one body. 

3. The matter of the church has been fully consid- 
ered in the preceding lectures, together with some 
things belonging to ^^ form. We come now to treat 
of the other questions connected with the form ; and, 
first, as to church power — potestas, 

4. The nature of church power must be considered 
before the consideration of the scA'eral modes in which 
it is exercised, because everything connected with these 
modes, offices, officers, courts, <tc;, is found in the grant 
of power to the church itself, and the institution of a 
polity and rule therein by Jesus Christ, her only Head 
and King. 



Nature and Extent 0¥ Church Power. 107 

5. This power comes from Christ alone. The gov- 
ernment of the church is upon his shoulders, to order 
it (his kingdom), and to establish it with judgment and 
justice forever. All power is given to him, in heaven 
and earth, by the Father, and he is the head of the 
church, which is his body, and head over all things 
else for the sake of his body. (See Westminster As- 
sembly's Form of Government^ Preface ; and our Form 
of Government, Chap. TL, Sec. 1, Art. 1 ; Isaiah ix* 6, 7 ; 
Matthew xxviii. 18-20; Eph. i. 20-23, compared with 
Eph. iv. 8-11, and Psalm Ixviii. 18.) 

6. This power, therefore, in the church is only 
'^ministerial and declarative," that is, the power of a 
minister or a servant to declare and execute the law 
of the Master, Christ, as revealed in his word, the 
statute-book of his kingdom, the Scriptures contained 
in the Old and New Testaments. No officer or court 
of the church has any legislative power. '^ Christ alone 
is Lord of the conscience, and hath left it free from 
the doctrine and commandments of men which are in 
anything contrary to the word, or beside it, in matters 
of faith and worship." {Confession of Faith, Chap. XX. 
Sec. 2.) Slavery to Christ alone is the true and only 
freedom of the human soul. 

7. This statement is opposed to the theories of, 1st, 
Papists; 2nd, Erastians; 3rd, Latitudinarians. 

8. The papists, by their claim of infallibility for the 
church as the interpreter of the Scriptures, as well as 
by the claim to make scripture (apocrypha and tradi- 
tion), make the power of the church magisterial instead 
of ministerial, and legislative instead of declarative. 
Hence the brutal disregard, in that church, of the lib- 
erty of Christ's people. Antichrist has usurped the 
prophetic and regal as woU as the priestly offices of 
the church's head. Hence the name Antichrist^ in the 
place of, and therefore against, Christ. 

9. The Erastians deliver the church into the hands 
of the civil magistrate, some of them admitting one of 



108 ECCLESIOLOGY. 

the keys to belong to the church (the key of doctrine) ; 
others, more consistently, denjdng to the church the 
power of both keys, and so destroying the autonomy 
of the church altogether. This is to be considered 
more fully hereafter. {Con. of Faith, Chap. XXIII.) 

10. The Latitudinarians (I use the word for want of 
a better) hold a discretionary power in the church, lim- 
ited only by the prohibitions of the word ; whatever is 
not prohibited, or contradicted by what is commanded, 
is lawful, is a matter of Christian liberty, and the 
church has power to order or not according to her 
views of expediency. This theory is held, or rather 
practically carried out, in various degrees. Some, as 
Archbishop Whately {Kingdom of Christ), contend 
that ecclesiastical power is ordained of God in the 
sense in which the civil is ordained. (Eom. xiii. 1, 2.) 
The '^ powers that be" are said to be "ordained of 
God," because God has so constituted man that he 
cannot live except in society, and society cannot be 
maintained except by an organization, more or less 
complete, and a government of some sort. Now, men 
of different races and different histories require differ- 
ent forms of government. The government must be 
the organic product, the outgrowth, the fruit of the 
people's history; and as, consequently, it is mere po- 
litical quackery to prescribe the same civil constitution 
for all nations alike ; so, in the society of the church, 
there must be a government, and the government must 
be determined by the character and circumstances of 
the people ; and as no form of ecclesiastical polity is 
forbidden in the New Testament, the church is free to 
adopt any that suits her. 

Others (see Hodge's Church Polity, pages 121 ff.), 
afraid to go so far, contend that general principles 
are laid down in Scripture, but details are left to 
the discretion and wisdom of the church. This is 
obviously a very unsatisfactory rule. What are ''gen- 
eral principles"? General principles may be either 



Nature and Extent of Church Power. 109 

^^ regulative" or ''constitutive." Regulative principles 
define only ends to be aimed at, or conditions to be 
observed ; constitutive determine the concrete form in 
which those ends are to be realized. Regulative ex- 
press the sjyirit, constitutive, i\\efor7n of a government. 
It is a regulative principle,' for example, that all gov- 
ernments should be administered for the good of the 
governed ; it is a constitutive principle that the govern- 
ment should be lodged in the hands of such and such 
officers, and dispensed by such and such courts. Reg- 
ulative principles define nothing as to the mode of their 
own exemplification ; constitutive principles determine 
the elements of an actual polity. [ThormvelVs WorA's, 
IV., page 252.) 

Now, if Dr. Hodge's general principles are regula- 
tive only, then he is as much of a latitudinarian as 
Whately. If they are constitutive, he is as much a 
''strict-constructionist" as Dr. Thorn well. He uses an 
illustration which in one part would seem to indicate 
that his general principles are constitutive ; but in the 
other, regulative. ''There are fixed laws," he says, 
" assigned by God, according to which all healthful 
development and action of the external church are de- 
termined. But, as within the limits of the laws which 
control the development of the human body there is 
endless diversity among different races, adapting them 
to different climes and modes of living, so also in the 
church. It is not tied down to one particular mode of 
organization and action at all times, and under all cir- 
cumstances." Now, the two parts of his illustration 
do not hold together. The orgcudzation of the human 
body is the same in all races, climes, and ages. Dif- 
ferences of complexion, stature, conformation, et cetera^ 
there doubtless are ; but the organization is the same. 
And this is the kind of unity and uniformity we claim 
for the church as a divine institute. Hodge elsewhere 
seems to acknowledge something like constitutive prin- 
ciples revealed in Scripture. He makes the three dis- 



110 ECCLESIOLOGY. 

tinctive features of Presbyterianism to be: 1st, The 
parity of the ministry; 2nd, The right of the people 
to take part in the government; 3rd, The unity of the 
church. I do not acknowledge these to be distinctive 
principles of Presbyterianism; but they look some- 
thing like constitutive principles. We shall see here- 
after that the second of these principles is no principle 
of Presbyterianism at all, much less a distinctive one. 

In regard to this latitudinarian theory, I observe : 

1st. That it differs little in effect from the Papal and 
Erastian. It makes man, and not God, to determine 
the whole matter. 

2d. It is contrary to the Protestant doctrine of the 
sufficiency^ of the Scriptures as a rule of faith and 
practice. See C. of F,^ Ch. I. Sec. 6; ''the whole coun- 
sel of God," &c. It implies that in regard to a large 
sphere of human duty, and that too, concerning so 
high a matter as the government of the kingdom of 
Christ, men are left to walk in the light of their own 
eyes. 

3d. It is contrary to the liberty of the people of God. 
Dr. Hodge and others speak of strict Presbyterians as 
if they were bringing the church under the yoke of 
bondage by insisting upon a ''Thus saith the Lord" 
for everything. We answer, that the liberty of the be- 
liever does not consist in doing what he pleases, but 
in being the slave of Christ. "Be ye not the slaves of 
men' is the apostle's command. And the assumption 
of this wide discretion by the church has been the 
great cause of the tyranny wliich has been exercised by 
church rulers over the poor sheep of Christ. Liberty, 
in the mouths of those who have the power in their 
hands, means doing Avhat tliey please, serving their own 
lust of dominion, and lording it over the weak and de- 
fenceless. Witness the Pharisees, Papists, Anglicans, 
and the free democracies. Liberty is a mere word to 
juggle with, except in the. sphere of the Spirit and in 
union with Christ. Where the largest discretionary 



Nature and Extent of Church Power. Ill 

power lias been claimed and exercised in the nominal 
cliurcli of God, there have the people groaned under 
the hardest bondage ; for it is the discretionary power 
of the rulers to impose burdens upon the people. 
First prelacy, then popery, with the aid of the '' Cath- 
olic doctrine," grew out of the notion that the consti- 
tution of the cliurcli in the apostolic age did not suit 
the church in its more advanced stage, and that a form 
corresponding with the organization of the empire 
would suit the people better, and not being condemned 
by the Word, it might be lawfully established. Hence, 
as there were prefects, ex-archs, et cet., in the civil, 
so there ougiit to be patriarchs, metropolitans, etc., in 
the ecclesiastical organization. And as the civil pyra- 
mid was capped with an emperor, so the ecclesiastical 
with a pope. But what became of the liberties of the 
people? So also in England — contest between Puri- 
tans and Anglicans. The liberty of the monarch, or 
the parliament, or the church, to convert the adiapliora 
into laws, was only the liberty to destroy the liberty 
of those whom God hath made free. The ''judicious 
Hooker" laid the egg which was hatched by the impe- 
rious Laud. Another instance, sadder than all to us, 
is the history of the Old School Presbyterian Church 
of the North, which set up its deliverances on ''doc- 
trine, loyalty, and freedom," as terms of communion 
in the church. The word of God, and that word only^ 
is the safe-guard of freedom. 

4th. It is founded upon a false analogy between a 
natural, social and civil, or political development, and 
a supernatural, social, and ecclesiastical development. 
In the sphere of man's natural life, it is undoubtedly 
true, as has been already suggested, that the form of 
civil polity must be determined by the character, cir- 
cumstances, or, in a word, by the history of a people ; 
must be the fruit of the past, and not an arbitrary 
theory or utopian constitution, founded upon abstract 
notions of what is best. And, consequently, since the 



112 ECCLESIOLOGY. 

life of every people is its own, and different from that 
of every other people, the government must be differ- 
ent. A striking proof of this is to be found in the 
present condition of this country, where two sections 
of a country have had such different developments 
that one must be held, by main force, as a conquered 
province, hecause it adhered to the constitution of the 
country, and the other has forsaken and subverted the 
constitution. But the case is very different with the 
church, for the simple reason that her life is not nat- 
ural, but supernatural; she does not grow into a free 
commonwealth, but is free-horn^ not . of blood, nor of 
the will of man, nor of the will of the flesh, but of God. 
She is composed of all kindreds and tongues, and peo- 
ples and nations. All the members, whether subjects 
of a monarchy, or citizens of a republic, are spiritually 
and ecclesiastically free: ''For where the spirit of the 
Lord is, there is liberty." Hence, in the early church, 
the subjects of a Nero, or Caligula, or Domitian were, 
at the same time, members of a free commonwealth. 
In the state the soul makes for itself a body, an exter- 
nal organism, through which it may act ; in the church 
the soul, as in the old creation, has a body made for 
it by God, its creator. The polity of the church, there- 
fore, like the body of man, ought to be everywhere the 
same organism essentially. It confirms this view, that 
the church changed its external organization only after 
she had become corrupt and had lost her internal and 
spiritual freedom. After she had become worldly in 
spirit, she became subject to like changes with the 
world, and this liability to change became the more 
marked when she became identified with the world 
through her union with the state under Constantine 
and his successors. In the middle ages the nominal 
church had become almost natural and earthly in her 
life, and, of course, lost her freedom altogether. For 
a great portion of her history her true life has been 
maintained in small bodies of witnesses, whom she 



Nature and Extent of Church Power. 113 

disowned and pei'secuted. And so in tbe Northern 
States of this country, she identified herself with the 
civil power, and exhibited more of the spirit of the 
harlot upon the scarlet-colored beast, than of the 
spirit of the spouse of Christ. 

5th. It is contrary to the plain teachings of God's 
word and of our constitution, in regard to the nature 
of church power. According to those standards all 
church power is " ministerial and declarative." The 
officers of the church are, collectively, a ministry, and 
each officer is a minister or servant. Christ himself 
condescended to be a minister, and in that memorable 
rebuke which he administered to the ambition of his 
disciples, he informs them that the power which they 
are to exercise in the church is unlike that of civil 
rulers, even of those civil rulers whose administra- 
tion has entitled them to the denomination of 
'' benefactors"; for it is a power of service, of obe- 
dience to him for the sake of his church, and not a 
power of lordship or dominion. The only honor in 
the church is the honor of hard work for the 
church. The power of a preacher is the power of a 
minister or servant to declare his Master's will, both in 
reference to the credenda and agenda in preaching. 
The power of a ruling elder is the power to do the like 
in ruling, and especially to apply that will in the actual 
exercise of discipline. A presbytery, whether congre- 
gational, provincial or general, is a body of servants or 
ministers to declare the law and find the facts and ren- 
der a verdict, such as is authorized by the word of 
Christ, who has established the court, created the 
judges, and defined their functions. A deacon, as his 
very name signifies, is a servant to do his master's 
will in regard to the collection, custody and distribu- 
tion of the revenues of his kingdom. 

6th. Lastly, it is contrary to the nature of the be- 
liever's life, which is a life of faith and of obedience, 
implying a divine testimony and a divine command. If 



114 ECCLESIOLOGY. 

the clinrch officers, then, hjive poAver to make institu- 
tious and create officers which God has not ordained, 
then the people have the right to refuse obedience, 
and there is a dead lock in the machinery. There is 
no power to enforce obedience, for all church pow er is 
moral and spiritual, and no man can be required to 
promise or render obedience except in the Lord. 

11. All church power then is simply ''ministerial or 
declarative." The Bible is a positive charter — a defi- 
nite constitution — and wdiat is not granted is, for that 
reason, held to be forbidden. A constitution, from the 
nature of the case, can only prescribe w^hat must he. If 
it should attempt, explicitly, to forbid everything which 
human ingenuity, malice, or audacity, might invent, 
the w^orld could scarcely contain the things that should 
be w^ritten. The av hole function of the church, there- 
fore, is confined to interpretation and obedience of the 
word. All additions to the word, if not explicitly pro- 
hibited, are at least prohibited hnplicitly in the gen- 
eral command that nothing he added. 

12. The ministerial and declarative power of the 
church has been distributed in the books into several 
classes. For instance, in the Second Book of Disci- 
pline of the Kirk of Scotland, Andrew Melville says : 
" The W'hole policy of the Kirk consisteth in three 
things, viz. : in doctrine^ discipline and distrllndion ^' 
w here the alliteration is used for a mnemonic purpose. 
''Discipline" is used in the wise sense of government 
and "distribution " for everything pertaining to the of- 
fice of deacon. Others (See Turretin^ L. 18, Q. 29, ^ 
5), divide church poAver into dogmcdic and judicud, or 
disciplinary , corresponding Avith the symbol of the 
"keys" — the key of knoAvledge and the key of disci- 
pline or gOA^ernment ; or Avhere the figure is that of a 
pastor or shepherd instead of a stcAvard — the staff 
"Beauty," and the staff "Bands." Zech. xi. 7. There 
is a distribution of this poAver better still (see Turretia 
ut supra) into dograatic, diatactic and diacritic. The 



Nature and Extent of Church Power. 115 

first relating to doctrine, the second to polity and ad- 
ministration, the third to the judicial exercise of disci- 
pline. Another distribution of the yotestas ecclesiastica 
is into potestas ordinis and potestas reghninis or juris- 
dictionis. (Note the sense in which these terms are 
used by papal writers, p. 49 supra. See Second Book 
of Discipline, chapter I. ; also Gillespie's Assertion of 
the Government of the Kirk of ^QoiXoi^ndi, in Preshyter tan 
Armory, Vol. I. p. 12 ; of Gillespie's Treatise, Chap. II.) 
This distinction signalizes the mode in which power is 
exercised, whether by church officers severally, or 
church officers jointly ; the potestas ordinis being a 
several power; the potestas reghninis, n joint ]^o^n ex. 
Teaching may be either. The preacher exercises the 
power of order when he preaches the gospel ; a church 
court exercises the power of government when it com- 
poses or issues a creed, or when it testifies for the doc- 
trine or precepts of Christ, and against errors and im- 
moralities. It is teaching, and that jointly, the w^ord 
of Christ, either in regard to what we are to believe 
concerning God or what God requires of us.*" The dog- 
matic power, therefore, may be either jointly or sever- 
ally exercised. The dvit<tctic2^n^ the diacritic must be 
exercised /6'/>'?iZ?/, and, therefore, belong to the potestas 
regiminis ov jurisdictionis. The Westminster standards 
are composed and arranged according to this division. 
The Confession of Faith and the Catechisms belong to 
the potestas dogmatica ; the Form of Government, the 
Directory for Worship, and the Rules of Order mainly 
to the potestas d/iatactica', the Canons of Discipline 
mahdy to the jjotestas diacritfca. 

13. Proof that this power belongs to the church. 
1st, From the gift of the kej^s. Matthew xvi. 19, 20 ; 
xviii. 18 ; John xx. 22, 23. 2d, From the nature of 
society. This power constitutes the bands and joints 
by which it is at once able to live and to act. 3d, 
From the existence of offices in the church ; but office 
implies power. 4th, From the titles given to these 
10 



116 ECCLESIOLOGY. 

offices in 1 Tim. v. 17, 1 Thess. v. 12, Heb. xiii. 17, 
Acts XX. 28, 1 Cor. iv. 1, 2 ; Tit. i. 7, 1 Cor. xii. 28. 
5tli, From passages of Scripture in which the exercise 
of this power is mentioned, such as 2 Cor. x. 8, also 
as 1 Cor. ix. 4, 5, 6 ; 2 Cor. xiii. 10, where ''power" 
corresponds with 7;>6>to/r^^9. Also 1 Cor. v. 3, 4, 5. 6th, 
From the fact that a distinction was made, even in the 
Old Testament, between the civil and the ecclesiastical 
power; but of this more hereafter. 

14. As to the diatactic power of the clmrch some- 
thing must be said more particularly, for it is here that 
the greatest controversies have arisen. How far does 
this arranging, ordering power of the church extend ? 

According to the view we have taken of church 
power, as "ministerial and declarative," this question 
amounts to the same as the question, ''How far, and 
in what sense, has the church discretionary power over 
details of order, worship, etc.?" We have seen that 
there is no legislative power in the church, properly so 
called, but only a judicial and administrative power. 
The law is in the Bible and nowhere else, and Christ 
is the only lawgiver. But all the details of the appli- 
cation of the law are not given, and could not have 
been given without swelling the book to dimensions 
utterly incompatible with its ready use as a rule. 
Voluminous as human law is, it cannot enter into min- 
utiae, e. (/., Congress by law establishes the Depart- 
ment of War, or of State, in the executive administra- 
tion of the government; but it leaves the making of 
"regulations" in circumstantial matters, or matters of 
detail, to the head of the department or of a particular 
bureau; and this officer, therefore, does not exercise 
legislative power in making such "regulations," but a 
diatactic power, the power of arranging and ordering 
under the law. So in the church, the doctrine of the 
church and its government and v:orship are laid down 
in Scripture, and the declaration of this doctrine he- 
longs io i]ie 2>otestas dogniatica. But there are "cir- 



Nature axd Extent of Church Po^yER. 117 

cumstances in the worship of God and the government 
of the church common to human actions and societies, 
which are to be ordered by the light of nature and 
Christian prudence, according to the general rules of 
the word, which are always to be observed. " See C. 
of F., Chap. I. Sec. 6, and 1 Cor. xi. 13, 14; xiv. 26-40. 
The acts of church courts in reference to these '' circum- 
stances," are executive, or administrative, or diatactic 
" regulations^' " Circumstances," in the sense of our 
Confession, are those concomitants of an action, with- 
out which it can either not be done at all, or cannot be 
done with decency and decorum. Public worship, for 
example, requires public assemblies, and in public as- 
semblies people must agree upon a time and a place 
for the meeting, and must appear in some costume and 
assume some posture. Whether they shall shock com- 
mon sentiment in their attire, or conform to common 
practice ; whether they shall stand, or sit, or lie, or 
whether each shall be at liberty to determine his own 
attitude — these are circumstances. They are neces- 
sary concomitants of the actions, and the church is at 
liberty to regulate them. Parliamentary assemblies 
cannot transact their business with decorum, efficiency 
and dispatch without moderators, rules of order, com- 
mittees, etc. ; and the parliamentary assembly, and, 
therefore, the church, may appoint moderators, com- 
mittees, etc. All the details in reference to the dis- 
tribution of courts, the definition of a quorum, the 
times of their meeting, the manner in w^hich they shall 
be opened, details which occupy so large a space* in 
our Book of Order, are ''circumstances" which the 
church, in the exercise of her diatactic power, has 
a perfect right to arrange. We must carefully dis- 
tinguish between those circumstances which attend 
''human actions" as such, i. e., without which the ac- 
tions could not be, and those circumstances which, 
though not essential, are added as appendages. These 
last do not fall within the jurisdiction of the church. 



118 ECCLESIOLOGY. 

She has no right to appoint them. They are circum- 
stances in the sense that they do not belong to the 
substance of the act. They are not circumstances in the 
sense that they so surround it [circmiistant) that they can- 
not be separated from it. (See Turretin, L. 18, Q. 31, 
specially IF 3, p. 242-3, of Vol. TIL Carter's ed., 1847.) 

A liturgy is a circumstance of this kind, as also bow- 
ing at the name of Jesus, the sign of the cross in bap- 
tism, instrumental music and clerical robes, et cet, 
(See Owen's Discourse on Liturgies and ThornwelVs 
■ Works, IV. p. 247.) With this view agrees Calvin. (See 
Instit. B. 4, ch. 10, pp. 28-31.) The notion of Calvin 
and our Confession is briefly this: In public worship, 
indeed in all commanded external actions, there are 
two elements, a fixed and a variable. The fixed ele- 
ment, involving the essence or the thing, is beyond the 
discretion of the church. The variable, involving only 
the '' circumstances" of the action, its separable acci- 
dents, may be changed, modified or altered, according 
to the exigencies of the case. The rules of social in- 
tercourse and of grave assemblie^S in different countries 
vary. The church accommodates her arrangements so 
as not to revolt the public sense of propriety. Where 
people recline at the meals she would administer the 
Lord's supper to communicants in a reclining attitude ; 
where they sit she would change the mode. {^Thom- 
'weWs Works^ IV. pp. 246-7. See also Cunningham's 
Beforrners and Theologians of the Reforniatwn, p. 31, 
'' Of the views," <fec., to the bottom of p. 32. Also 
his essay on Church Power, ch. 9, of his Church Prin- 
c'q^les p. 235 and ff*. Also Gillespie's Dispute against 
the English Popish Ceremonies, pt. 3, ch. 7, in Presby- 
terian Armory, Vol. I. 

Laios bind the conscience j^e^r se or simpliciter. Regu- 
lations bind it seciindura quid, i. e., indirectly and 
mediately in case of scandal and contempt. In the 
first, Ave regard the authority of God alone; in the 
second, Ave regard the good of our neighbors. In the 



The Poayer Ecclesiastical and Civil. 119 

first, the auctnritas mandaniis ', in the second, the Quaii- 
dati causa (the avoiding of offence.) See Tarretin^ L. 
18, Q. 31, Vol. III., p. 255, Carter's ed. 

XIII. 

The Power Ecclesiastical Contrasted ayith the 
Power Civil. Eelation of the Church to the 
State. 
We may obtain a still clearer view of the nature and 
extent of clmrch power (the topic of the last lecture), 
bv comparing it Avith the civil power, and considering 
the relations of the two organizations to which these 
powers belong. In addition to this reason for a care- 
ful consideration of this topic, the liistor}^ of this 
country furnishes a very weighty one. The providence 
of God has, in the loudest tones, recalled the attention 
of the church to its own nature, as constituted and de- 
fined by himself, to the nature and functions of the 
state (which is also his ordinance) and to the relations 
between the two. 

1. The fundamental relations implied in the distinc- 
tion between the power civil and the power ecclesias- 
tical have been recognized, more or less clearly, from 
the beginning of the history of our race. These rela- 
tions are that of man to man in a state of society, on 
the one hand, and, on the other hand, that of man to 
God, the Creator, the Moral Governor, the Judge and 
Sovereign Proprietor of man. They have been desig- 
nated by difterent names, and have been the objects of 
divers kinds of legislation, according to the diversities 
of age and country; but whether known by this name 
or that; whether, in practice, partially separated or 
totally confounded, the relations themselves have been, 
and could not but be, apprehended. The relation of 
man to God would be developed in the operations of 
conscience arraigning the offender before an invisible 
tribunal, and pointing him to a coming retribution ; 



120 ECCLESIOLOGY. 

the relation of man to man would force itself upon the 
notice bj the necessities of every day's existence. Yet 
it cannot be denied that in reference to few objects of 
human thought have attempts at articulate exposition 
been more unsuccessful than in reference to this; or 
that the wisdom of the wisest men has still more sig- 
nally failed, by any kind of political machinery, to re- 
alize perfectly the theories which make the most plau- 
sible approximation to the truth. The sources and 
occasions of this failure will be better understood by a 
rapid historical review. 

2. It is not strange that these relations should have 
been confounded, since, in the beginning, they existed 
together in the bosom of the family. The family is 
the social unit under the constitution of God, and not 
the individual, as an infidel socialistic philosophy as- 
serts. It is the germ out of which grows the great tree 
of organized society, with its far-reaching and mul- 
tiplied ramifications. In this germ the rudimental 
forms of both church and state existed; but they 
existed after the manner of all organic rudimental 
forms, so undeveloped and so mingled that their differ- 
ences could not be perceived. The head of the family 
was both king and priest, governing and ordering his 
household in regard to the things of this life, and in- 
structing and leading them in the knowledge and wor- 
ship of God. The child grew up with a reverence for 
his father as the disposer of all his affairs, the director, 
the authoritative director of all his thoughts and acts 
in every part of the sphere of his natural life, in all his 
spiritual, as in all his temporal relations. The father 
prescribed the faith and duty of his children in rela- 
tion to God, as well as their duty to himself and to the 
other members of the family. In a word, he was the 
representative of God in all things to his household. 
When the child grew up, he did not pass, as he does 
now, from a government of this sort into an organized 
political or ecclesiastical community, into a church or 



The Power Ecclesiastical and Civil. 121 

state, for there was then neither church nor state in 
the modern sense of tliese terms ; but became himself 
the head of another family, and was invested with 
powers like those which his father before him had 
possessed, both temporal and spiritual. 

3. This state of society, in which it would have been 
next to impossible to decide the question still mooted, 
whether the fifth commandment belongs to the first or 
second table of the law, continued in the line of Abra- 
ham, Isaac and Jacob, down to the organization of the 
nation of Israel, when the distinction between the civil 
or temporal power and the ecclesiastical begins to be 
visibly developed. Before proceeding to consider this, 
however, let us look for a moment at the history of 
other lines. 

4. The patriarchal or family constitution of society 
seems to have been lost, and political communities to 
have been formed, sooner in these lines. The poster- 
ity of Cain seem to have made movQ progress, in the 
modern or popular sense of the word, than the poster- 
ity of Setli. In the organization of society, as well as 
in invention and use of the mechanical and fine arts, 
they seem to have been greatly in the advance. We 
are told in Genesis iv. 17, that Cain himself, after he 
Avent out from the presence of the Lord, ''builded a 
cityy He and his family, therefore, may be regarded 
as the founders of the state, and of that complex mate- 
rial and worldly civilization which the state embodies 
and represents. They were the sons of men, acknow- 
ledging nothing higher than himian wisdom and Jiuinan 
power, and bending all their energies to the one end 
of concentrating the forces of humanity, and of secur- 
ing in this way a worldly surarnuni honurii, an all-com- 
prehending good, which might compensate for the loss 
of the favor and communion of God, which they had 
deliberately repudiated. They thus prepared the way 
for the Babel-builders and for heathenism, which is a 
worship of nature and its forces, and particularly of 



122 ECCLESIOLOGY. 

the wisdom and power of the highest part of nature, 
vian. It is wortliy of note that over against this or- 
ganization of society, and continuation of its forces 
in the line of the apostate Cain (the sons of men), oc- 
curs the record of something like the organization of 
the true worshippers of God in the line of Enos : '' Then 
began men to call themselves by the name of Jehovah""^ 
(Genesis iv. 26) ; that is, began to call themselves the 
children or people of God. But the time had not yet 
fully come for the organization of the church visible 
in correspondence with the state. The church thus 
formed united itself with the state; the sons of God 
intermarried with the daugl iters of men, and the pro- 
geny which resulted from that union Avas so gigantic 
and monstrous in its wickedness, so ''violent," so re- 
gardless of everything but vc^qyq force, that God swept 
the earth wdth the besom of destruction, and reduced 
the race to its original dimensions of a single familj'. 

5. After the flood, appears Noah as a new federal 
head of the human race, and as the king and priest of 
his household, and the development begins again. But 
Avith the like results. The spirit of the beastly serpent 
shows itself in the builders of ''Babel" (a name which, 
from that time forward, becomes a symbol of the powder 
of man in opposition to the power of God, and, there- 
fore, of man as abdicating the dignity of his nature 
and becoming a "beast"), who renew the experiment 
of their forerunners, the posterity of Cain, the experi- 
ment of living without God by combining the individ- 
ual forces of man. (See Genesis xi. 1, 4.) They built 
a city and a tower, to make themselves a name. They 
became worshippers of men instead of God; not man 
as an individual, weak and mortal, but associated man. 
And though God confounded the project of the city 
and tower, yet Nimrod, "the mighty hunter before the 
Lord" (that is, in the very face and in defiance of the 

* The rendering in the margin of E, V. 



The Power Ecclesiastical and Civil. 123 

Lord ; compare Genesis vi. 11 ; xiii. 13 ; 2 Chronicles 
xxviii. 22 ; Psa. lii. 7), the mighty hunter of mankind, 
appears upon the stage as the founder of the kingdom 
of Babylon, or Assyria (Genesis x. 9, &c.), the first of 
those beastly kingdoms, the series of which Daniel 
gives us in his vision (Daniel, vii.), from a point of 
view of a worshipper of God, and which Nebuchad- 
nezzar, from his point of view, saw as a splendid hu- 
rnan image, representing the dominion and glory of 
man, 

6. Here, then, we have the state in a colossal form, 
and from the circumstances of its origin we can expect 
nothing but an identification of the civil and the spir- 
itual relations of mankind. If we read carefully the 
first seven chapters of the prophecy of Daniel, we can- 
not fail to see that the great subject is the contest be- 
tween the supremacy of God and the supremacy of 
man ; between the supremacy of God in man and the 
supremacy of man without God and against God. This 
is the real '^conflict of ages," revealed in the garden 
of Eden (Genesis iii. 15), and ending in the triumph 
of the ''Saviour of man," as recorded in the closing 
chapters of the Apocalypse. ''The seed of the wo- 
man" (the "Saviour of man," God-man), and the "seed 
of the serpent," the beast, these are the parties which 
divide the world and convulse it. These are the par- 
ties which are contending for the mastery upon the 
territory of the United States. Nebuchadnezzar re- 
fused to listen to anything from the God of heaven, 
who ruled among the inhabitants of the earth, until he 
became a beast of the field. See the remarkable nar- 
rative in Daniel, ch. iv. Taught by this acted symbol, 
he acknowledged that his view of his empire as su- 
preme, and as demanding the homage of the heart as 
well as the external obedience of the subject, was false, 
and that there was a God in heaven, who ruled su- 
preme, and was, therefore, alone entitled to be wor- 
shipped. He became wiser than some rulers now are. 



124 ECCLESIOLOGY. 

7. We need not trace the history of apostate man 
any further at present. In all heathen governments 
the result is the same. The state, the world, is ror«v. 
Religion is obedience to the powers that be, and this 
obedience, whether rendered to an oriental or an occi- 
dental despot, or to a Grecian or Roman democracy 
or republic, is the whole of religion, because there is 
no higher God than man in ''humanity," or than man 
chooses to allow to be worshipped. 

8. We return now to the line of the chosen seed, and 
to the institute of Moses. What was the relation of the 
ecclesiastical and civil power in the nation of Israel? I 
answer, that they were not entirely separated nor en- 
tirely confounded. They were in that relation to each 
other which Ave might have anticipated from the pecu- 
liar calling of the Jewish nation, and from their posi- 
tion with respect to the other nations of the world. We 
are expressl^^ told in Ex. xix. 5, 6, that the Hebrews 
were called to be a "jyecuUar treasure unto God above 
all people, and a kingdom of priests and a A(9Z?/ nation." 
If this language means anything, it means that the Is- 
raelitish nation should differ from all other nations in 
this, that it should be a holy, consecrated nation — a 
nation of worshippers of the true God, in covei-iant 
with God, ruled by his word, and his word only, and 
not by the light of their own reason. When other na- 
tions, therefore, call themselves Christians, and as na- 
tions make covenants with God and consecrate them- 
selves to his service as worshippers, they usurp privi- 
leges which God has made pecidiar to Israel. Any na- 
tion which boasts that it is a '' kingdom of priests," is 
pro tanto in rebellion against God. Israel was not, in 
this respect, a model or pattern for civil communities, 
but a type of the church of God under the gospel. The 
relation it sustained to God is the relation that the 
spiritual body of Christ sustains to him. The alli- 
ances which it w^as forbidden to form with other na- 
tions were types of the alliances which the church is 



The Power Ecclesiastical and Civil. 125 

forbidden to form witli civil governments ; and the dis- 
astrous results of lliose alliances, the slavery, degrada- ■ 
tion and misery of Israel, were types of the slavery, 
degradation and misery of the church's alliances with 
powers foreign to herself in nature, origin, government 
and destinj' . God was the sovereign of Israel in the 
sense of being their lawgiver, which he is of no other 
nation. He was their husband, and the husband of 
no other. Transgression in them was adultery as well 
as treason. They were the inheritance of God, and he 
was their inheritance. He w^as their landlord and they 
were his tenants. Their taxes were acknowledgments 
of his goodness and of his proprietorship in the land 
and in its fruits. Nor was he an absent proprietor. 
He dwelt among them. When they dw^elt in tents, he 
dwelt in a tent with them. When they lived in houses, 
he dwelt in a house among them. They were his fami- 
ly, and he the father and head. • None of these things 
are true of any other nation, nor can they be. They 
are all true of the Christian church, the body of Christ, 
and eminently true of her as the substance of which 
Israel was the shadow. This being the case, there was 
of necessity a commingling of the civil and the spirit- 
ual. Hence, we find the kings (whom God gave to them 
reluctantly, if we may use the expression, because it 
sprang from a desire to be like other nations,) some- 
times exercising powers ''circa sacra^' — about sacred 
things. We are not, however, to consider the king as 
taking the place of God, as his vicar in the theocracy. 
In the provisions of the law^ concerning the king 
(Deut. xvii. 14-20), we find no authority given to him to 
intermeddle with the faith, government or worship of the 
church. He is required to have a copy of the law, made 
from the standard text in custody of the priests and Le- 
vites, and to read it, and keep it, that his heart be not 
lifted up above his brethren. When Uzziah undertook 
to burn incense, a function belonging to the priest- 
hood, he was smitten with leprosy, a punishment almost 



126 EcCLESIOLOGt. 

as severe as that inflicted upon Uzzab, a private man, 
for taking liold of the ark of God when the oxen shook 
it. 2 Chron. xxvi. 16-23; 2 Sam. vi. 6, 7. There was 
no king-priest, no Melchisedek, in Israel. See also 1 
Sam. xiii. 9-14. David meditated bnilding a temple, 
and Solomon bnilt it. David was prevented from build- 
ing and Solomon encouraged to build by a prophet 
speaking in the name of God ; that is, by special direc- 
tion, and not in the legal exercise of his royal func- 
tions. It is further to be noted that both David and 
Solomon were themselves prophets in a general sense, 
and acted and wrote under inspiration. Further still, 
they were eminent types of Christ as king — the one of 
Christ as warring and conquering, the other of Christ 
as a peacefully reigning king. But did not Ilezekiah, 
Josiah and other kings destroy idolatrous worship and 
reform the nation ? Certainly ; they could not do 
otherwise and be faithful to the constitution of the the- 
ocracy, the fundamental principle of which w^as the 
unity of God. And no civil magistrate can now afford 
to dispense wdth religion altogether. The primary doc- 
trines of natural religion, the being of a God and a 
moral government, are- implied in everj^ oath of oflice 
and in every oath of testimony. Hezekiah and Josiah 
also ordered the keeping of the passover ; but this fes- 
tival bore a national as w^ell as a religious character. 
Still it must be confessed that the kings of Israel ex- 
ercised a power about sacred things, which we contend 
that no king or government has a right now to exer- 
cise. They were kings of ''a j'j6'c'?YZ^yr people, a \\o\j 
nation, a kingdom of priests." 

Again, let it be considered that the rise of the royal 
dignity in Israel was contemporary with the rise of the 
prophetical office, both growing out of the typical 
character of the nation. Considering the nation as a 
moral person, having an organic life and a conscience, 
the prophet and not the king, unless he was also a 
prophet, was the exponent of that conscience — Ex. iv. 



The Power Ecclesiastical and Civil. 127 

16. It was not accidental, but necessary, that wdien 
God had, so to speak, given way to a visible king, he 
should have the prophet as his representative and 
month -piece. Otherwise, the- whole constitution must 
have been subverted. The king was subject to the 
prophet, because the government was a theocracy, and 
all civil and social arrangements were subordinate to 
the religious, as the shell is subordinate to the kernel, 
or the body to the soul. Judaism was a religious 
state, as Paganism is a political religion, and, it may 
be added, a political religion is Paganism and a re- 
ligious state is Judaism. We find, moreover, that the 
prophetic office rose in importance as the tendency to 
apostasy, both in king and people, increased. As men 
and as citizens, priests and prophets were under ob- 
ligation to obey the king; but as priests and prophets, 
they w^ere subject to God alone, the head of the' the- 
ocracy ; a foreshadowing of the precise relations of the 
office-bearers of the church under the gospel to the 
civil power. 

Upon the whole it is a very striking fact, that in an 
oriental nation, and in a theocracy, public forms should 
recognize, to so great an extent, the distinction and 
separation between civil and sacred functions. See 
2 Chron. xix. 8-11, especially vs. 11.) We find the 
sacerdotal functions given to a separate order of offi- 
cers, and the whole ministry of the tabernacle to a 
particular tribe ; while the elders, the representatives 
of the patriarchal system, seem to have continued the 
exercise of civil functions. We do not pretend that 
there was an entire separation of the secular and the 
spiritual. It is possible that the synagogue, with its 
mingled jiuisdiction over civil and ecclesiastical affairs, 
may even then have existed, as that jurisdiction was 
based on the patriarchal principle upon w^hich the 
whole Hebrew commonwealth was organized. But we 
assert that we have in the books of Moses what w^e 
find nowhere else in the East, a class of high and hon- 
11 



128 ECCLESIOLOGY. 

orable functions in the matter of diyine worship with 
which the highest ofl&cer in the state dared not inter- 
meddle; and further, that where the two classes of 
functions came together the spiritual was supreme. If 
any argument, therefore, be drawn from Judaism in 
support of the union of church and state, it is in favor 
rather of the Ultramontane than of the Erastian the- 
ory. In this respect, as we have seen. Paganism pre- 
sents a strong contrast to Judaism in giving supremacy 
to the civil power. But in both, as also in Mahome- 
tanism, the two powers are so combined that their 
histor}^ cannot be separately written. There is no his- 
tory of the sj'nagogue, or the mosque, or the pagan 
temple, as there is of the church. See Gillespie's 
Assertion of the Goverment of the Kir Jc of Scotland , Pt. 
IL, cli. 7 (in Pres. Armory, Vol. L), for some ingenious 
arguments to prove that there was a separation of civil 
and ecclesiastical courts among the Jews. Also Pt. L, 
ch. 11. 

9. We come now to the era at which the church Avas 
to escape from the trammels of the Hebrew state and 
to assume a separate and independent existence. This, 
of course, could not be done without a struggle. But 
to make the transition less abrupt and difficult, Christ 
so ordered it that the old dispensation was allowed to 
Overlap the new for forty years, during which period 
the church was gradually but rapidly obtaining a foot- 
hold among the Gentiles and dissolving its connec- 
tions with perverted and petrified Judaism, which as- 
sumed, more and more, an attitude of bitter hostility 
to it. The woman who gave birth to the man-child 
was preparing for her flight into the wilderness of the 
pagan nations. The "Acts of the Apostles," after de- 
scribing this process of loosening and transition, closes 
with Paul at Eome, the great representative of the free 
church of the Gentiles at the metropolis of heathen- 
dom and of worldly power. 

10. The first issue which was formally made between 



The Power Ecclesiastical and Civil. 129 

this worldly power and the church was made by the 
Emperor Domitian. The persecution under Nero (A. 
D. 54-68) was partial and local, and it is by no means 
clear that the Christians were not persecuted as 
Jews ; but Domitian (A. D. 81-96) claimed to be 
God, made statues of himself, to which he insisted 
divine honors should be paid. He was the legiti- 
mate successor of Nebuchadnezzar and of Nimrod. 
It is his persecution of the church which con- 
stitutes the historical basis or starting point of the 
Apocalypse, as the persecution of the ancient church 
by Nebuchadnezzar was the historical basis of the 
prophecies of Daniel, the Apocalypse of the Old Tes- 
tament. The question became again a practical one : 
'' Is there any god higher than the head of a world em- 
pire ? is th^re any god in heaven who rules the gods on 
earth, and is able to deliver his servants?" The ^^ con- 
flict of ages" is resumed between the seed of the ser- 
pent and the seed of the woman, between man without 
God and man with God. One of the sufferers in the 
conflict on the side of the woman's seed is chosen (eir. 
96 A. D.) to sketch its outlines and leading character- 
istics, until it shall be ended in the victory of the Son 
of man, and the final judgment upon ''the whore," ''the 
beast," and "the false prophet," which are, respec- 
tively, symbols of the church visible leaning upon the 
strength of the civil power, and glorifying it instead 
of Christ ; of that civil power usurping the preroga- 
tives of Christ, and making war upon all who assert 
the supremacy of Christ; and of the wisdom of the 
world giving its support to the civil power as supreme, 
as the all-disposing Lord and the all- comprehending 
Good. (See Hobbes's [b. 1588, d. 1679] Zeviathcm, a 
happily-chosen name, in which this view of the civil 
government is audaciously advocated.) If this view of 
the symbols be correct, it seems that one of the great 
lessons Avhicli this wondrous book was designed to im- 
press upon the church was the certain pollution and 



130 ECCLESIOLOGY. 

misery resulting from the union of church and state ; 
the certain corruption of both, and the infliction of 
mutual wrong and outrage ; the certain supremacy of 
the state over the adulterous church, and the final de- 
struction of the adulterous church by the very power 
upon which she leaned. Rev. xvii. The kings com- 
mit fornication with her (vs. 2), and then, when God's 
time comes for judgment, they burn her with fire. Vs. 
16; Lev. xxi. 9. 

11. It w^as God's mercy which exposed the Chris- 
tian church, almost from the beginning of its existence 
and for the first three hundred years of its career, to 
the bitter persecution of the civil power. The line was 
thus clearly drawn between Christ and Csesar, and it 
was demonstrated that the church could live, not only 
without alliance with the state, but in spite of all its 
power and hate. The church was taught that the 
world is enmity against God, and that any conformity 
to it, or alliance with it, could only end in the corrup- 
tion and slavery of the church, as the Israelites of old 
were taught as to Egj^pt, Assyria, etc. 

12. The seer in Patmos saw (Rev. xiii. 3) one of the 
heads of the beast ''as it were wounded to death, and 
his deadly wound was healed." If the civil power is 
sj^mbolized as a beast, only so far as it is opposed to 
the church of God, then the deadly wound signified its 
dropping for a season its wonted appearance of hos- 
tility to the cause and kingdom of God, to cease for a 
time to act as a beast ; the which it could only do by 
assuming either a truly religious or a professedly re- 
ligious character. Tliat this character was only pro- 
fessedly religious seems to be indicated by the words 
" as it were," and by the healing of the wound. This 
characteristic is intended to apply, probably, to the 
whole period of the seventh head. In the correspond- 
ing passage in chap. xvii. 8, 11, the revealing angel 
says to John: ''The beast that thou sawest ivas and is 
not;'' and again he calls it "the beast that was, and is 
not, and yet is;" and again, in vs. 11, "the beast that 



The Power Ecclesiastical and Civil. 131 

was, and is not," is said to be the eighth and of the 
seven. These expressions seem to indicate the para- 
doxical character of the beast, a beast passing into the 
form of the woman, or, in nnsymbohcal language, the 
world-power, which is essentially the enemy of God, 
becoming or pretending to be Christian. The healing 
of the deadly wound indicates the reassumption, or 
the breaking forth again, of its hostility to the cause 
and kingdom of Christ. Its profession of Christ's re- 
ligion has not changed its nature. It is still possessed 
of the spirit of a beast ; it shows itself to be a part of 
the kingdom of darkness, of which the old serpent, the 
dragon, the devil, Satan, is the head and prince (Rev. 
xii. 9 ; xiii. 2, 4) ; the true successor of Cain, Nimrod, 
Nebuchadnezzar, and the Edomite Herods. Whether 
Nebuchadnezzar, or Cyrus, or Antiochus Epiphanes, 
or Domitian, or Constantine is the reigning monarch, 
the spirit of the power is the same, the spirit of the 
world, which is enmity against God. Hence all these 
powers were seen by Nebuchadnezzar in one image; 
and in Bevelation xiii. John sees the first three beasts 
of Daniel (chap, vii.) combined in the fourth and last. 
(See Auberlen's Daniel and the Revelation^ and Fair- 
bairn on Prophecy.) 

13. This deadly wound of the beast, this apparent 
change in the character of the civil power in its rela- 
tion to the church, took place, or was first exemplified, 
in the conversion of Constantine the Great, and in his 
patronage of the church in the first quarter of the 
fourth century. The system of that emperor was only 
a christianized paganism, as the result showed. Re- 
ligion was still considered a part of the machinery of 
the state. The only difference was that Christianity 
was substituted for paganism, and the God of the 
Christians for Jupiter and the whole herd of divinities 
in the Pantheon. It was the old theory of the first 
centuries of the Roman republic with a new applica- 
tion. In primeval Rome everything was moulded by 



132 EcCLESiOLOGY. 

religion. Their lihri rihiaJes (to the Eomans what the 
Mosaic ritual was to the Hebrews), according to Festus 
(See Leg are s Essay on Roman Legislation)^ ^'taught the 
rites with which cities are to be founded and altars and 
temples dedicated; the holiness of the walls of towns; 
the law relating to their gates ; how tribes, wards and 
centuries are to be distributed ; armies organized and 
arrayed, and other like things relating to peace and 
war. The same influence extended itself over the very 
soil of the Roman territory, and made it, in the tech- 
nical language of their augury, one yast temple. It 
was consecrated by the auspices ; it could become the 
j)roperty only of one who had the auspices, that is, a 
patrician, a lioman, properly so called; once set apart 
and conyeyed away, it was irrevocably alienated, so 
that sales of the domain were sruaranteed by relisjion, 
and it was sacreligious to estabUsh a second colony on 
the place dedicated to a first. The city, by its origi- 
nal inauguration was also a temple; its gates and 
walls were holy ; its pomoerium was unchangeable until 
higher auspices had suspended those under which it 
Avas first marked out. Every spot of ground might 
become, by the difterent uses to which it was applied, 
sacred [sacer), holy (sanctas), reUgious {religiosits). 
The first agrimensor, says Niebuhr, was an augur, ac- 
companied by Tuscan priests or their scholars. From 
the foundation of the city the sacredness of the pro- 
perty was shadowed forth in the god Terminus, and that 
of contracts protected by an apotheosis of faith {iides). 
In short, the worthy Eoman lived, moved and had his 
being, as the Greek writers observe, in rehgion." How 
striking the resemblance, in this description, of many 
things to corresponding features in Judaism. The 
grand difference is, that Judaism was a theocracy and 
Romanism an anthropocracy. In the one there was a 
real consecration to God; in the otlier a real conse- 
cration only to the glory of man. But here we find 
the germ of the Erastianism of Constantine. So far is 



The Power EccLEglASTicAL and Civil. 133 

it from being true, that the union of the church and 
the state was the work of Christian priests. It was the 
work, remotely, of the "lawyer priests" of primeval 
Rome, an oriental caste transmitted to the Romans 
through Tuscany, at once by inheritance and by edu- 
cation (See Legare %it sup.), and proximately of the 
jurisconsults of Const antine. Subsequently the system 
was reduced to a more formal shape, and hardened by 
the lawyers of Theodosius (A. D. 379-'95) and Justinian, 
(A. D. 527-65.) 

14. Its Pagan origin and character was soon be- 
trayed. The church began to be moulded by the 
'state in government, worship, and even in faith. It is 
necessary that the inferior should be moulded by the 
superior. Hence the ecclesiastical hierarchy corres- 
ponding with the ciAdl hierarchy of the empire. Hence 
the temples, altars, festivals, images, lustrations, sacri- 
fices, incense ; in a word, the pomp and pageantry and 
hoUowness of the paganized Christian worship. (See 
Middletons Letter from Rome^h. 1683, d. 1750.) Hence 
the persecutions of the faithful who refused to recognize 
this paganized Christianity as the religion of the crucified 
Nazarene. The autonomy of the church disappeared, 
and she became the slaye of the civil power. The 
nature of the beast passed into the woman and the 
woman became the adulteress riding upon the beast. 

15. In the coui'se of time a reaction came, and the 
human mind, refusing to rest in the center of truth, 
swung to the opposite extreme, still holding to the 
union of the spiritual and the temporal, but asserting 
the supremacy of the spiritual. The woman would not 
only ride upon the beast and be carried by it, but 
would govern and guide it according to her own will. 
This change began with the policy of the Carloyingian 
line of monarchs (began 752 A. D.) and their am- 
bitious attempts to revive the Roman empire in the 
West. In order to secure the patronage and assistance 
of the church, they conferred civil authority and terri- 



134 ECCLESIOLOGY. 

tory upon ecclesiastics, and the pope himself became a 
feudatory of Pepin (A. D. 752-'58), CliaTlemagne (A. D. 
768-814) , and their successors in the holy German Eoman 
empire. And here did vaulting ambition overleap itself. 
This very policy was the occasion of the wars between 
the popes and the emperors, which kept the world in 
an uproar during the middle ages; the church gain- 
ing more and more power as a temporal and civil insti- 
tute under the direction of Hildebrand (A. D. 1073- 
1085) and Innocent III. (A. D. 1198-1216), and others, 
reaching the summit of its audacity under Boniface 
VIII. (A. D. 1294-1303), and then gradually yielding 
again to the temporal power. Thus the popery of 
the middle ages became the Nemesis of the Erastian- 
ism or Paganism of Constantine, Theodosius and Jus- 
tinian. But both popes and emperors united in per- 
secuting the witnesses of Christ's supremacy. 

16. Then came the earthquake of the Reformation. 
But this did not dissolve the union of church and state. 
''Luther had some glimpses of the grand truth that the 
spiritual kingdom of Jesus Christ is something separ- 
ate from and independent of the civil government or- 
dained of God the Creator in the hands of Coesar; but, 
driven to shelter himself under the protection of the 
monarch who was ambitious to rid himself of the au- 
thority of the pope, yet equally jealous of such an ivi- 
jjeriuin in iiniJerw as a completely organized spiritual 
government in the hands of the church, Luther was 
obliged, as he thought, to sacrifice a part of the spir- 
itual prerogatives of the church for protection against 
the power of the pope." (Robinson's sjDeech at Cin- 
cinnati, November 8th, 1866.) Calvin had a much 
clearer conception of the church's autonomy than Lu- 
ther, and would allow no interference on the part of 
the state with the discipline of the church. Yet he was 
bred a lawyer; he had studied the Pandects, and al- 
lowed the authority of Tribonian (A. D. 545) to obscure 
the interpretation of that word of God, to which he ad- 



The Power Ecclesiastical and Civil. . 135 

hered with, a tenacity and fidelity unsurpassed by man. 
If Calvin had been a German instead of a Frenchman, 
he probably would not have seen so much of the truth 
as he did see, for Ultramontanism had the ascendency 
in Germany. But even his imperial mind could not 
emancipate itself from the thraldom of " the spirit of 
the age." 

17. His influence, however, is seen in the original 
Puritan party of England, in the struggle for religious 
and civil liberty in Holland and the other states of the 
Netherlands, and especially in Scotland. The Reforma- 
tion in Scotland from the first, more than any of the 
movements of the sixteenth century, rested upon the 
theory of the autonomy of the spiritual commonwealth, 
and it seemed to be the special mission of its martyrs 
to testify for '' Christ's crown and covenant," against 
the lofty claims of the temporal sovereign. But after 
all the testimonies of its martyrs, and a hundred years 
of suffering, the seductive strategy of Carstairs ''^' and 
the political Protestantism of William and Mary, and 
the settlement of the Scottish kingdom under Queen 
Anne, proved more powerful than the testimony of the 
martyrs, and at last subjugated the Scottish, as well as 
the English churches, under the yoke of Caesar, leaving 
the piety and earnest love of the truth, which might 
afterward be generated by her doctors, to fiy off in se- 
cession after secession till the present day." {liohinson 
ut supra. See also his lecture on The Avierican Theory 
of Church and State before the Maryland Institue, 
Baltimore.) The fundamental defect in the position of 
the Scotch church (a defect to which the Free Church, 
notwithstanding its noble testimony, still clings), is the 
doctrine that the state ought to support the church by 
its revenues ; as if it were possible for the church, thus 
supported by the state, to be independent. 

* On Carstairs, see Mdcaulny's History of England, III., p. 269, and 
Hetherington's Hist of the Ghiirch of Scotland, chap. viii. (pp. 300 and 
304, Vol. V. of Carter's Ed., New York, 1844.) 



136 ECCLESIOLOGY. 

18. The Confession of the Westminster Assembly be- 
ing composed under the influence of the Scotch com- 
missioners and of Englishmen brought up in the Eras- 
tian establishment, could not of course be expected to 
teach the truth more purely, on this subject, than the 
Scotch. Hence it was changed hefore it was adoj)ted 
by the Presbyterian Church of the United States of 
America (1788), as you have been informed in a previ- 
ous lecture. 

19. Such being the history of this subject in other 
countries and ages, we come now to notice, very briefly, 
its history in the United States. Most of the colo- 
nists v/ho came to this country, came of course with 
the ideas of church and state which prevailed in the 
lands from which they came. They had learned some- 
thing from persecution, but they had much still to 
learn. The New England Puritans established a sort of 
theocracy, thus rushing to the other extreme from the 
Erastian paganism from which they had suffered so 
much ; the pulpit became the expounder of public 
policj' and of the law of the land ; and the church was 
filled with hypocrites and pretenders to godliness. 
Roger Williams and the Baptists suffering persecution 
in Massachusetts, betook themselves, after the manner 
of minorities when oppressed by majorities, to the 
ramparts of sound principles, and founded the settle- 
ment of Rhode Island (1635) in which they proclaimed 
not only religious toleration, but religious liberty. The 
Huguenots were quiet; the Dutch were liberal; the 
Scotch and Scotch-Irish, who were the chief instru- 
ments in moulding the Presbyterian Church in this 
country, were the next, after Roger Williams, to pro- 
claim the true theory of the relations of church and 
and state. Waddell, " the blind preacher," William 
Graham, Stanhope Smith, and the old Hanover Pres- 
bytery in Virginia, on the ecclesiastical side, with 
Thomas Jefferson on the civil side, who, first of all the 
statesmen in history, caught the true idea, co-operated 



The Power Ecclesiastical and Civil. 137 

in establishing what is sometimes called the Virginia 
doctrine, which Mr. Stuart Robinson (accommodating 
the language of Melville) expresses thus : " There be 
two republics in this nation, one the civil republic of 
the United States, of which the man in the White House 
is the head; the other the spiritual commonwealth, 
of which Jesus Christ is the head, with which the man 
in the White House has nothing to do, but to protect 
the persons and property of its subjects, as that of 
other citizens." (Cincinnati speech.) This is the theory 
wdiich was supposed to be the theory of the United 
States, as well as of Virginia, up to the period of the 
war. It was found, explicitly or implicitly, in all the 
constitutions and bills of rights of the States (with the 
exception, perhaps, of North Carolina), and is recog- 
nized by that provision of the constitution which pro- 
hibits the passage of any law infringing upon the 
rights of conscience. It is the clear teaching of 
the Confession of Faith of the Presbyterian Church of 
the United States of America, and, I suppose, was uni- 
versally received by all other denominations, if not 
expressly taught in their public formularies and sym- 
bols. It is the Scotch theory, without the feature of 
state support, and with the voluntary principle instead. 
20. But the history of this country has demonstra- 
ted that a refined and exalted worldly civilization 
makes no change in the heart of man ; that he is an 
incorrigible sinner, and incurably disposed to walk in 
the light of his own eyes; that the kingdom of Christ 
is of no account to him, except so far as it can be made 
to subserve his OAvn lusts. We stand amazed, notwith- 
standing the faithful warnings of prophets and apos- 
tles, at the reappearance of the beast, and the revival 
of the maxims of Koman civilians and mediaeval can- 
onists in the nineteenth century, and in 'Hhe freest 
and most enlightened nation of the globe." We are 
confounded when we see the owls and bats of the dark 
ages flying about in the blaze of this boasted period of 



138 ECCLESIOLOGY. 

illumination, and statesmen and chiirclimen, in an age 
of boasted liberty, forging over again the chains and 
fetters of the ages of slavery and blood. Saddest of 
all, we see a church which has been accustomed to 
pride itself upon an ancestry martyred for Christ's 
cro^Ti, voluntarily pulling down his ensign and running 
up the ensign of C?esar; a church which has testified 
"repentance" towards God and "faith towards the 
Lord Jesus Christ," as the biuxlen of its commission, 
now drivelling about "loyalty and freedom," and out- 
lawing men who are as good as themselves, for no 
other cause than the holding of a theory of the govern- 
ment Avhicli has been held by many of the best and 
wisest Americans from the beginning. Once more, 
then, the church is called to testify for he rights of 
her only head and king, Jesus Christ, and for the 
freedom and independence which he has conferred 
upon herself as the purchase of his most precious 
blood. Once more has she been compelled by the as- 
saults of her adversaries to study her own nature and 
to define her relation to that other ordinance of God, 
the state. These relations we come now to consider 
dogmatically, as we have already considered them 
historically. 

21. The church and the state agree in these three 
points : 1st, That they are ordained of God ; 2nd, That 
they are ordained for his glory; 3rcl, That they are or- 
dained for the good of mankind. 

22. They differ in the foUoAving points : 1st, In the 
aspects and relations in which God is contemplated 
by them respectively as the source of power; 2nd, In 
the aspects in which man is contemplated by them re- 
spectively as the ()l}je('t of power; 3rd, In the rule by 
wdiich they are to be respectively guided in the exer- 
cise of power. Of these, in their order, we now pro- 
ceed to treat more particularly. 

23. First, as to the aspects and relations in which 
God as the source of power is contemplated by church 



The Power Ecclesiastical and Civil. 139 

and state respectively. I observe that the state is the 
ordinance of God, considered as Creator, and, there- 
fore, the moral governor of mankind, while the church 
is an ordinance of God, considered as the Saviour and 
Bestorer of mankind. We need not dwell upon this 
point here, as the illustration and proof of it are ne- 
cessarily involved in the proof and illustration of the 
next, which is second, as to the aspects and relations 
in which church and state, respectively, contemplate 
man as the ohject of poioer, where it is to be noted, (a), 
that the state is ordained for man as man, the church 
for man as a sinner, under a dispensation of restora- 
tion and salvation. The state is for the whole race of 
man, the church consists of that portion of the race 
which is really, or by credible profession, the media- 
torial body of Christ. The state is a government of 
natural justice; the church, a government of grace. 

24. The st*ate is ordained for man as man, and is 
ordained to realize the idea of justice. AVe find it ex- 
isting in the germ when the race consisted of one man 
and one woman. The woman was in a state of sub- 
ordination to the man. This subordination was not 
the penal consequence of transgression, as is evident 
from 1 Timothy ii. 11-14, where Paul argues that the 
transgression was the consequence of the violation by 
the woman of the order established by heaven, of 
her ambitiously forsaking her condition of subordina- 
tion, and acting as if she were the superior or the 
equal of the man. If it should be asked, where was 
the necessity or the propriety of an order implying 
subordination in beings who were created in the image 
of God, in knowledge, righteousness, and true holi- 
ness ? the answer is, that the propriety was founded 
upon the diversity of capacity in intellect and other 
endowments of human nature, which it pleased God 
should exist in the man and the w^oman. If man had 
not fallen, it would still have been his duty to bring 
up his children in the knowledge of God, and to direct 
i2 



140 ECCLESIOLOGY. 

them in the way in which they should glorify God; 
albeit these children, by the terms of the supposition, 
would all have been holy and without inclination to 
go astray; nay, more, in no danger at all of going 
astray, as they would have been confirmed in the pos- 
session of eternal life by the covenant with their fa- 
ther. In other words, if all creatures, because they 
are creatures, need direction from God as to the mode 
in w^hich they are to glorify and enjoy him, why might 
not this direction be given through the instrumentality 
of others as well as immediately by God himself? 
There is not only no absurdity in such an arrange- 
ment, but there are traces of the wonderful wisdom 
and goodness of the Creator in it. Society is not an 
unison, but an exquisite harmony, a grand instrument 
of various chords for the harping of hymns and halle- 
lujahs to the God and Father of all. Even among the 
unfallen angels, we have reason to believe, there are 
thrones, dominions, principalities, and powers — ordt^r 
in the form of a celestial hierarchy. Man having fallen, 
however, and the love which constituted the very spirit 
and temper of his mind having given place to enmitj^, 
something more than direction w^as now necessary. He 
needed restraint ; his appetites must be bridled and co- 
erced. The law of the two tables, which, in his state 
of innocence and uprightness, had been written upon 
his heart summarily, in the j^ositive and preceptive form 
of love, must now be written externally, in detail, upon 
tablets of stone, and in a prohibitory form, ''thou shalt 
not'' ; and in reference to the second table, which pre- 
scribes the duties growing out of the relations of man 
to man, it became necessary that overt acts of trans- 
gression which were not only morally wrong, but in- 
jurious to society, should not only be discountenanced 
by prohibition, but restrained and prevented by pun- 
ishment. Hence arose a government oi force. 

25. The case, then, stands thus: In any condition 
of our race, the social nature of man must have given 



The Power Ecclesiastical and Civil. 141 

rise to the secular power. In a state of innocence it 
would have been simply a directing power, a constitu- 
tion designed merely to carry out and fulfil, without 
confusion, the blind instincts or impulses of love, love 
of self and love of neighbor. In a fallen state, it has 
become, of necessity, a restraining and punishing, as 
well as a directing power. But in both conditions and 
in both forms it is an ordinance of God, 'Hhe author of 
the constitution and course of nature." It is the nat- 
ure of man to exist in society, and society is necessary 
to his existence. But society cannot exist without law 
and order of some sort. Therefore government is as 
necessary to man as society, and for this reason is as 
natural to man as society. It may not be an original 
endowment of man, but it is natural, and, if natural, 
then the ordinance of God. The perception of dis- 
tance by the eye is not an original endowment of man, 
but the organ is so constituted by God, that, in the 
course of time, it necessarily acquires it, and it is, 
therefore, natural to man, and therefore the ordinance 
of God. Civil government, then, is a branch or de- 
partment of the moral government of God, the Creator 
and Buler over man. God governs man by mechani- 
cal laws, by chemical laws, by vital laws, and he gov- 
erns him by civil laws. He wdio leaps from a precipice 
or drinks a glass of poison, and dies, dies under a law 
of God, which executes itself. He who murders his 
brother, and dies on the gallows, dies under a law of 
God, which is executed hy the hand of the civil magis- 
trate, the minister of God. In all such cases death is 
a penalty inflicted by God for a violation of a rule of 
his government, physical or moral. 

26. If this be a just view of the subject, civil gov- 
ernment is a great moral institute, not a mere ex- 
pedient of human wisdom and sagacity for the pre- 
vention of evil. It is this low, wretched, utilitarian 
view which has contributed its full share to the crimes 
and miseries of this country, in which the criminal 



142 ECCLESIOLOGY. 

law was fast becoming as pure an affair of expediency 
as the civil. But the government of God, as Creator, 
is a government oi justice, and crime is punishable for 
its ill'desert; and the civil magistrate, who is the min- 
ister of God (Roman xiii.), while he has no right, from 
any view of expediency, to inflict any punishment which 
justice does not sanction, is bound to inflict the pun- 
ishment which justice requires and crime deserves. 
This remark is needed for the sake of one important 
inference, and that is, that every civil government on 
earth is bound explicitly to recognize its responsibility 
to God as the moral governor of mankind. It is per- 
fectly monstrous that the power which bears the sword 
and exercises the aw^f ul prerogative of taking human 
life, either in peace or war, should not acknowledge 
itself to be the servant of the sovereign Lord of life 
and death ; that the power which represents the majesty 
of justice, should not recognize its responsibility to 
him who is the eternal foundation and standard of all 
righteousness. So much for civil government as the 
ordinance of God. It regards man as man, and, there- 
fore, regards all men. 

27. The church, on the other hand, is the ordinance 
of God, considered as the Saviour of men in the person 
of Jesus Christ, his only begotten Son. It contem- 
plates man, not simply as man, nor as upright in his 
original condition of innocence, nor simply as a fallen 
creature, but as 'Hhe prisoner of hope," or more strictly 
still, as '^the heir of salvation," really or by credible 
profession. It, therefore, does not contemplate all 
men, but only those who enjoy a dispensation of grace, 
or more strictly (as to its government) those who pro- 
fess and call themselves Christians. 

28. We note again, (J), that the state considers man 
ovl\j as to his outioard being. It protects the citizen 
or the subject in his person, his property, his liberty, 
by punishing illegal assaults upon either. Its pun- 
ishments affect the body and outward condition of the 



The Powee Ecclesiastical and Civil. 143 

transgressor. It compels obedience and punishes dis- 
obedience by brute force. This is the sanction of its 
law. Its symbol is the sword. It can have nothing 
to do, therefore, with the faith of its subjects; for faith 
lies in the domain of the spirit, and cannot be com- 
pelled. The state does not, and cannot, aim at holi- 
ness, it aims only at social order. It has nothing to 
do with the religion of the citizen, or the loyalty of the 
heart, but only with his obedience to the laws, affecting 
the body and the outward estate. It cannot require 
the citizen to approve and love the laws, but only not 
to violate them. 

29. The churchy on the other hand, moves in the 
sphere of the spirit. It has nothing to do with the 
bodies, the estates, the outward condition of mankind. 
Its sanctions are not corporeal, involving the exercise 
of brute force, but only moral and spiritual, appealing 
to the judgment, the faith, the conscience of its mem- 
bers. It knows nothing of the sword, the dungeon, 
the lash, pecuniary fines, etc., etc., but only of argument, 
exhortation, admonition, censure, etc., etc. Its great 
function is to teach, to convince, to persuade, '' to bear 
witness of the truth." Its triumphs are the triumphs 
of love ; it drags no reluctant captives at the wheels of 
its chariot; the design of its ordinances, oracles, min- 
istry, is through the efficacious operation of the Holy 
Ghost to bring its captives into hearty sympathy with 
its king, and so to give them a share in the glory and 
exultation of the triumphs of the king. Its symbol 
is the " keys," by which it opens and shuts the king- 
dom of heaven, according as men are believers or im- 
penitent. Its only sword is the sword of the Spirit, 
which is the word of God. Its discipline is not the 
punishment of an avenging judge, asserting the un- 
bending majesty of the law, but the discipline of a 
tender mother, whose bowels yearn over the wayward 
child, and who inflicts no pain, except for the child's 
reformation and salvation. The authority of his king- 



144 



ECCLESIOLOGY. 



dom is spiritual. His sword is a sword ^^ coming out 
of his mouth.'' His voice, is " Son, give me tliy heart " / 
" Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand"; and 
by the power of his Spirit, he sweetly constrains those 
whom he chooses for members of his kingdom to call 
him ''Lord." He makes them willing in the day of 
his power. They are his, or profess to be his ; have, 
or make a credible profession of having, the great law 
of love written upon their hearts, and, therefore, need 
more the directing than the restraining power of the 
laAv. The whole discipline of the church is based 
upon the supposition of faith in its members, so that 
what is of no account in the eye^ of the state, is 
primary and fundamental in the eyes of the church. 
It is so perfectly obvious, that the employment of 
force is abhorrent, from the whole nature and genius 
of the church, that even the fiends of the ''holy office" 
were compelled to profess the greatest horror of shed- 
ding the blood of heretics, and piously turned them 
over to the secular arm. The Inquisition was always, 
in theory at least, what every court of the church is, 
a "penitentiary tribunal," a tribunal whose function is 
not punishment, but discipline, not the destruction, 
but the edification of the offender, brought about 
through his personal repentance. 

30. Third. The state and the church differ in the 
rule by which they are respectivelj" guided in the ex- 
ercise of power. The constitution of the church is a 
divine revelation ; the constitution of the state must be 
determined by human reason and the course of provi- 
dential events. (Assembly of 1861.) The Bible is the 
statute-book of the church, the visible kingdom of 
Christ ; the light of nature is the guide of the state. 
The church has no legislative power, properly so- 
called, but only a power to declare and obey the law 
of Christ's kingdom. The church is only a witness, 
and she cannot go beyond the divine testimony of the 
Word; she has no commission to open her lips, but 



The Power Ecclesiastical and Civil. 145 

with a '^ Thus saitli the Lord." All her acts of govern- 
ment are acts of obedience to Christ, her only king. 
As a church, she owes no allegiance to any anthority 
but that of Christ ; as his bride, she owes no loyalty 
to any person but him. Her members, as citizens or 
subjects, owe allegiance to the civil power, and are 
subject to it in their bodies and estates ; but as Chris- 
tians, they know no authority but Christ's ; and if the 
church itself should enact laws against her divine con- 
stitution, her members must appeal from her to Christ, 
the king. The state may adopt any form of govern- 
ment it pleases — its power is magisterial and impera- 
tive. The power of the church being only "ministerial 
and declarative," she must adojot the form of govern- 
ment whose regulative and constitutive principles are 
revealed in the Scriptures, her constitution and charter. 
The life of the state is natural, and it is left to create 
an organization for itself. The life of the church is su- 
pernatural, and God prescribes an organization for it. 
31. When we say that the Bible is not the rule for 
the state, we do not mean that the state is at lib- 
erty to disregard its teachings. We mean to affirm 
that God has given no commission to the state to tes- 
tify to the truth of Christ's revelation, or to interpret 
it. It is to the church that the lively oracles have been 
comrriitted hy her divine Head, The church alone is 
founded upon the prophets and apostles, Jesus 
Christ himself being the chief corner stone. The 
church alone is the pillar and ground of the truth. She 
is the woman, clothed with the sun, with the moon un- 
der her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve 
stars. She is the system of candlesticks, in the 
midst of which the King of the kingdom walks, and in 
his hand alone are the stars, the teachers and the 
rulers of the church. Christ is the lumen illimrinans. the 
church is the lumen illuminatuin. It is the kingdom 
of the Son of Man, and not the kingdom of the levia- 
than of the state, which is the light of the world. This 



146 ECCLESIOLOGY. 

is the case under the present dispensation, whatever 
may be the case when kingdoms of this world shall be- 
come the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ. 
Hence the change which has been proposed from time 
to time in the constitution of the United States, so as 
to make that instrument acknowledge the divine 
authority of the Scriptures and the kingly office of 
Christ, proceeds upon a totally false conception of the 
sphere and functions of the state. As the state is the 
ordinance of God, as creator and moral governor, and 
is designed for man as man, it has nothing to do with 
any principles of religion but those which belong to 
man as man : to wit, the being of God and a moral 
government. To give it any power over the truths of 
revealed religion, and over the records which contain 
those truths, is to confound it with the church, or what 
is practically the same thing, to abolish the church, ex- 
cept as an auxiliary of the state, in preserving, order. 
It becomes then, what infidel philosophers have repre- 
sented it to be, a mere temporary '^ crutch." 

32. The definition of the church visible in our Con- 
fession (Chap. XXV. Sec. 5, 2), makes it to consist of 
those " who profess the true religion, together with their 
children." Now, if the proposed change in the consti- 
tution of the United States were made, the state would 
answer to this definition. It would profess the "true 
religion." If it should be said that it is but a single 
doctrine, which the state professes, we answer again, 
(a), that it is a confession fully as comprehensive as 
that which the church itself made for centuries under 
its patriarchal form ; (h), that in itself it includes the 
whole plan of salvation ; for Christ's kingly office is 
based upon his priestly. It is certainly no narrower 
than the confession in Acts viii. 37, and 1 Corinthians, 
xii. 3. It is the very substance of the teaching of the 
Avhole gospel history, specially of the first three Gos- 
pels. The burden of this history is the ''kingdom of 
heaven" and the ^'Son of Man," the king, {c), That 



The Power Ecclesiastical and Civil. 147 

the principle upon wliich the advocates of this amend- 
ment proceed does not hinder the state from enlarging 
its confession at any time, or from finally enlarging 
it to the dimensions of the Westminster standards. 
Upon the whole, then, it appears that these brethren 
would logically confound church and state, by making 
the same definition answer to both ; and really con- 
found them by making the state and church both wit- 
nesses of Christ. 

33. The only safety for liberty and religion is in 
rigidly enforcing the maxim that the Bible is the posi- 
tive rule for the church, a negative rule for the state. 
The state may do whatever the Bible does not forhid. 
The church may do only what the Bible directs or per- 
mits ; and where the Bible is silent, the church must 
be silent. Whatever the Bible does not grant is eo-ipso 
to the church prohibited. This distinction is al- 
most certain to be overlooked when civil and ecclesias- 
tical functions are mingled^ as in England in the days 
of Hooker and Cartwright — Hooker and the court 
party contending that matters not expressly prohibited 
in the Scriptures were matters of lawful legislation on 
the part of the church. This approval of the princi- 
ple, that whatever is not forbidden is lawful, was natu- 
ral enough to these men, because the church had been 
subject, and continued to be subject, to the civil power; 
and the principle is justly applicable to the state. 
Cartwright and the Puritans contending, on the other 
hand, that the principle was false in its application to 
the church ; that the Bible was the constitutioii and 
charter of the church, and consequently the silence 
was prohibition, or, in other words, that all additions 
to the things in the Bible, if not contrary to any par- 
ticular command, were contrary to the general com- 
mand that ''nothing be added." So, also, in the 
United States, when the church, forgetting her ex- 
clusive relation to Christ, committed fornication with 
the civil power, and,, abdicated her high dignity and 



148 ECCLESIOLOGY. 

glory as the free woman, voluntarily enslaved herself 
to the state. AVe find the church, on the one hand, 
leaving her testimony and prescribing terms of com- 
munion not revealed in the Scriptures ; and the state, 
on the other hand, transcending its sphere and usurp- 
ing the privileges of the church and of Christ. The 
state, and even a party in the state, dictates (virtually 
at least) the testimony of the church ; and the church 
(or its doctors) insist that the state also testify for a 
doctrine, which she herself had practically denied, the 
royal authority and headship of Christ. How re- 
morseless is that unconscious logic which governs men 
who have forsaken, or who are ignorant of, a conscious 
logic. The chwrch feels that there is no great difference 
between her and the state, and, therefore, on the one 
hand, acts upon the rule, that whatever is not prohib- 
ited is lawful ; and, on the other hand, insists that the 
state shall adopt her lip-service, and confess that Jesus 
is the king. She feels that Christ is no more her king 
than he is the state's king, and therefore the confes- 
sion and the legislation ought to be the same in both. 
How else can we account for the remarkable fact, that 
in the very midst of all the shameful subserviency of 
the church to the civil power, and its superserviceable 
zeal on behalf of the government in the midst of its 
apostasy from true allegiance to Christ, it should in- 
sist upon the state amending its constitution, so as to 
confess Christ to be a king. True, a like proposition was 
made in the Southern church, and in the midst of great 
political excitement, when the state loomed out in pro- 
portions vast enough to fill nearly the whole field of 
vision. But it has been buried effectually, and that, 
too, because deemed inconsistent with the Scriptural 
doctrine of church and state. 

34. This view of the relation of the Scriptures and 
of the truth they reveal to church and state respect- 
ively, is, we think, clearly taught in John xviii. 36, 37. 
Jesus answered, "My kingdom is not of this world; if 



The Power Ecclesiastical and Civil. 149 

my kingdom were of this world, then would my ser- 
vants fight that I should not be delivered to the Jews; 
but now is my kingdom not from hence. Pilate, 
therefore, said unto him. Art thou a king, then? 
Jesus answered. Thou sayest that I am a king. To 
this end was I born, and for this cause came I into 
the w^orld, that I should bear witness unto the truth. 
Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice." 1. 
Jesus teaches us that his kingdom is not of this world, 
either as to its origin or its nature. 2. That it is 
not, therefore, a kingdom of force^ but of persuasion, 
founded upon the conviction of the truth. Its great 
glory is internal, the possession of the truth ; its great 
external feature is ''bearing witness to the truth." The 
truth is the means by which this kingdom is established 
and extended, and the only subjects it recognizes are 
those who are ''of the truth," and all siicli are its sub- 
jects, 3. That this opposition between his kingdom and 
the kingdom of this world (which Pilate represented), 
should last during the dispensation of the calling of 
a people out from among the Gentiles. ''Now is my 
kingdom not from hence." Now, if a commission has 
been given to civil governments to profess the truth of 
Christ, how^ could Christ say that his kingdom differed 
from the kingdoms of the world in this very respect ? 
The ideas of "the truth" and "the sw^ord" are set over 
against each other. A kingdom of force is not a king- 
dom of truth, and vice versa. This is the very point 
of the contrast between the two kingdoms, as Christ 
presents it. And the question of Pilate, "What is 
truth ? " taken in connection with the following declar- 
ation to the Jew^s, "I find no fault in him," shows 
that he understood this much, that Christ's kingdom 
was a totally different thing from that of Csesar. He 
understood the difference better than many Christian 
kings, and even Christian churches, have understood 
it in later times. Bearing witness to the truth, thei'e- 
fore, i« the function of Christ's kingdom, not the func- 



150 EcCLESIOLOGt. 

tion of the kingdom of this world. It may do very 
well for a Saracen to talk (»f propagating the truth by 
the sword, but it is a shame for a Christian to think of 
force in connection with the truth. Only they who are 
"born of the truth" and ''of the spirit of the truth" 
can " obey the truth " and '' hear the king's voice." The 
sword has often silenced, but never convinced men. 

35. The idea of a Christian nation, which is associ- 
ated with this amendment of the constitution, is, as 
has been already suggested, a false and impracticable 
idea during the present condition of trial, testimony, 
and conflict. The Jews were a ^'peculiar people" in 
this respect, and were, therein, a type of the Christian 
church. The conception of the state which prophecy 
generally gives us is that of an organism operating by 
brute force, and it is generally represented in an atti- 
tude of opposition to the church of Christ. Hence we 
find those civil governments which have undertaken to 
"bear witness to the truth" have usually denied the 
truth and persecuted its professors. And even where 
civil governments make no such pretensions, their pol- 
icy, both domestic and foreign, demonstrates that they 
are "of the earth, earthy," "kingdoms of this world," 
and not of the Lord and of his Christ. We must wait 
for the sounding of the seventh trumpet, in order to 
see a Christian nation or a Christian government. Till 
then civil government will be, in the main, what 
Hobbes, its worshipper, represents it, a leviathan. 

36. It may not be amiss to add a word or two more 
upon the use which may be legitimately made of the 
Scriptures by the state. 1. In the ^r^^^ place, the light 
of nature and reason, which is the guide of the state, is 
made clear by the revealed will of God. The true 
statesman will seek light from every possible quarter. 
As he will enlarge his views by the study of the politi- 
cal writings of Plato, Aristotle and Cicero, and by the 
study of the great historians of Greece and Rome, as 
well as those of modern states, so he will not neglect 



The Power Ecclesiastical and Civil. 151 

the laws of Moses, nor the striking biblical histories in 
wdiich the operation of those laws is exemplified. And 
upon many points of civil regulation he will find that 
the Bible sustains the conclusions of reason and ex- 
perience. For example, in respect to the justice and 
expediency of capital punishment for the crime of 
murder, the Bible not only gives its sanction to this 
penalty, but makes it the duty of the civil magistrate, 
as the sword-bearer, to inflict it. It represents the land 
in which murder is not thus punished, as " polluted 
with blood," and thereby provoking the judgment of 
heaven. So also as to the lawfulness of war, and of the 
profession of a soldier. The sword-bearer is bound to 
wage defensive war; to punish the invader, and to 
protect the lives and property of the people, upon the 
same principle upon which he punishes the individual 
murderer. According to the light of nature, interpret- 
ed by the Scriptures, the Quaker theory of war is not 
merely a sickly sentimentalism, but a rebellion againsb 
the organized law of society and government. The 
law of marriage is another example. The Bible gives 
us, in the account of the creation of man, as male and 
female (one man and one woman, the one sex as the 
complement of the other), the true idea w^hich should 
govern all civil legislation concerning this relation. It 
shows the inexpediency of polygamy. In assuming, 
further, a community of life between the husband and 
the wife, it makes the promiscuous intercourse of the 
sexes a monstrous crime against nature, and so con- 
firms a physiological law, which has been established 
by observation and experience. It settles, also, the 
question of independent, marital rights. 

37. In the second place, the Bible rectifies the teach- 
ings of the light of nature. In the case of a weekly 
rest, for example, it teaches that such a rest, like the 
institution of marriage, belongs to man as man, was 
ordained before his fall, and is necessary to his well 
being. Reason and experience have amply demon- 
13 



152 ECCLESIOLOGY. 

strated the same truth, that the '' Sabbath was made 
for man"; but it is doubtful whether the fact would 
have been recognized by the light of nature alone ; and 
Christian governments, so-called, habitually violate 
reason and experience in their legislation concerning, a 
weekly rest. The French, at the close of the last cen- 
tury, abolished it altogether, and with what results all 
the Avorld knows. 

38. In the tliird place, every man who has received 
this revelation is bound to accept it as a revelation 
from God, and to regulate his faith and practice by its 
authority, either in a positive or negative way. Touch- 
ing the whole matter of the method of salvation, the 
whole question as to what is necessary to be believed 
or done, and all that is necessary to be believed or 
done, in order to salvation and eternal life, the Scrip- 
tures are a full, complete and j^ositive guide. Touch- 
ing the life that now is, the conditions necessary to 
sustain the being or promote the well-being of society, 
agriculture, commerce, manufactures, civil and crimi- 
nal laws, the man, if he be a civil magistrate, or what- 
ever else, is to be governed by the negative authority 
of the Bible. He can do anything which the Bible 
does not forbid. 

39. It may be said that this cannot be the theory 
received by the church and people of this countrj^ be- 
fore the war ; for it had become the settled policy of 
the Federal government to have chaplains of Congress 
and chaplains of the army and navy, and of the army 
and navy schools ; and of the State governments, as 
well as the Federal, to recognize the Sabbath as the 
law of the land ; to prescribe the reading of the Bible 
in the public schools, etc. We answer: 1. In refer- 
ence to the chaplains, that the government was bound 
to provide religious ordinances for those whom its ser- 
vice prevented from procuring them for themselves, 
but the choice of religious teachers ought to have been 
left to the men who were to be placed under their in- 



The Powek Ecclesiastical and Civil. 153 

struction; and, in respect to the chaplains of Congress, 
the compensation ought to be paid by the members 
themselves, not out of the government treasury ; or, in 
other words, they ought to act as men or citizens, not 
as legislators — in like manner as the President of the 
United States, or a Governor of a State, can invite the 
people to observe a day of prayer or thanksgiving, 
only as a distinguished citizen. If the chief magistrate 
should issue a proclamation of this sort, as of authority, 
without the action of the legislative department of the 
government, he would be guilty of usurping the powers 
of that department ; and if the legislative and executive 
departments together should ordain such a day, both 
would be guilty of usurping the powers of the church. 2. 
In regard to the use of the Bible in the public schools, the 
state has no power to ordain anything about the Bible in 
the public schools, either in the way of prescribing or 
proscribing its use as the word of God. It might 
ordain the use of the English Bible as a classic of the 
English language, but, in my judgment, it would not 
be expedient to do so. The public schools are not de- 
signed to teach revealed religion, but the branches of 
secular learning. The teaching of religion must be 
left to the family and the church. 3. In regard to the 
Sabbath, we have already alluded to one ground upon 
which it is recognized in civil law."^' It may be added, 
that the state has no right to violate liberty of con- 
science; and by disregarding the Sabbath as it does 
in some of its laws (in the post-office department, for 
example), it does violate the liberty of conscience by 
excluding from offices those who regard the Sabbath 
as a rest divinely ordained. On the other hand, it is 
absurd to contend, as Jews and infidels contend, that 
their rights are violated by the state's prohibiting 
buying and selling on the Sabbath, unless they take the 
position that the state has no right to put any re- 
striction whatever upon trade. If they take this po- 

* See Soutliern Presb. Review for Jan. 1880, pp. 101 ff . 



154 ECCLESIOLOGY. 

sition, they make civil government an impossibility. 
Illustrate the relation of church and state further by 
reference to the provision contained in the constitution 
of some of the States, forbidding ministers to be chosen 
to certain civil offices. 

40. One more question of great importance, as re- 
cent events have shown it to be, demands a brief no- 
tice. The respective jurisdictions of church and state 
seem to meet in the idea of duty. In many things, in 
the majority of things, this is the occasion of no diffi- 
culty. The church enjoins duty as obedience to God, 
and the state enforces it as the safeguard of social or- 
der. But there can be no collision unless the one or 
the other blunders as to the things that are rnaterially 
right. When the state makes wicked laws, contradict- 
ing the eternal principles of rectitude, the church is at 
liberty to testify against them, and humbly to petition 
that they may be repealed. In like manner, if the 
church becomes seditious and a disturber of the peace, 
the state has the right to abate the nuisance. In ordin- 
ary cases, however, there is not likely to be a collision. 
The only serious danger is where moral duty is condi- 
tioned upon a political question."^ Under the pretext of 
inculcating duty, the church may usurp the power to 
determine the question which conditions it, and that 
is precisely what she is debarred from doing. The 
condition must be given. She must accept it from the 
state, and then her own course is clear. If C?esar is 
your master, then pay tribute to him ; but whether the 
'4f " holds, whether Caesar is your master or not, whe- 
ther he ever had any just authority, whether he now 
retains it, or has forfeited it, these are points which 
the church has no commission to adjudicate. (Letter 
of Assembly of 1861 to the churches throughout the 
world.) This was the view also of Dr. Hodge and 
others who protested against the " Spring Resolutions " 

* On the tactics of Erastians and Ultramontanists as to these miioed 
questions, see Cunningham'' s Church Principles^ page 152. 



The Power Ecclesiastical and Civil. 155 

adopted by the Northern Assembly of 1861. They 
say: ^'We deny the right of the General Assembly to 
decide the political question, to what government the 
allegiance of Presbyterians, as citizens, is due, and its 
right to make that decision a condition of membership 
in our church." . . . ''The General Assembly in this 
decided a political question, and in making that decis- 
ion practically a condition of membership in the church 
has, in our judgment, violated the constitution of the 
church, and usurped the prerogative of its divine Mas- 
ter." (See the paper quoted in Bullock's address, page 
10.) The Synod of Kentucky of the same year, under 
the lead of Dr. E. J. Breckinridge and Dr. Humphrey, 
adopted a similar testimony against the action of the 
Assembly. In this they followed the example of the 
Master, who, though head over all things to the church, 
refused to decide the question of civil allegiance, or to 
exercise any other secular function. In this they fol- 
lowed the example of the church for many generations, 
which recognized no political questions, as questions 
of allegiance to this or that emperor. It was only af- 
ter the establishment of the Christian religion under 
Constantine, that church questions became compli- 
cated with questions of allegiance and of support to 
this or that government. 

41. It is a question, as the protestants of the Assem- 
bly of 1861 (Northern) say, about wiiich Christians 
may honestly differ. In this country it is a question 
about the interpretation of the constitution. The Fed- 
eralist ministers of the North, before the war, often 
exchanged views with States-rights ministers of the 
North and South upon this question, and no one of 
them thought of denouncing the States-rights theory, 
either as a heresy or as an immorality ; nay, not a few 
of them, who are now foremost in denouncing us as 
rebels, unworthy to sit Avith them at the Lord's table, 
asserted and defended the right of the South to seek 
redress against the tyranny of a majority, and one of 
them went so far as to defend the right of the South 



156 ECCLESIOLOGY. 

to make war for lier own protection. (See Breckinridge 
in Presbyterial Critic for July, 1855.) Surely it is an 
astounding spectacle to see this church fall so sud- 
denly, headlong, down from the very battlements of 
heaven into the boiling abyss of partisan political pas- 
sion, hatred, and excess. A solemn warning to us all 
to "watch and pray, lest we enter into temptation." 

42. The foregoing views of the relations of church 
and state, of the indispensable necessity of each mov- 
ing in its own orbit and attending to its own concerns, 
have been fully vindicated by the history of this coun- 
try. The church in the North became corrupt; the 
glory of Christ was sacrificed to the interests of Csesar ; 
the lovely fruits of charity perished in the storm of 
political prejudice and passion ; the unclean spirit of 
the world took possession of the temple of the Holy 
Ghost, and the church, instead of being a sequestered 
and quiet retreat for the heart weaiy of strife and tur- 
moil, became itself the scene of strife and turmoil. As 
its great type, the nation of Israel, dwelt in peace, 
while the surrounding nations were convulsed, so long 
as Israel was true to its vocation as a peculiar people 
and separate from the nations, but became subject to 
the dangers and calamities of those nations, even in a 
higher degree, when it formed entangling alliances 
with them, so also the church in this land, hj renounc- 
ing her dignity and safety as an organism entirely sep- 
arate from the state, became subject to the miseries of 
her ally. Better, a thousand times better, would it 
be for her to be wasted by the fire and sword of the 
beast, than to ride upon it and be carried hither and 
thither by it, or, in other wards, to renounce her alle- 
giance to her royal spouse and become a harlot. 

XIV. 

Other Theories of Church and State. 

1st, That of alliance. The great expounder of this 
theory is Bishop Warburton (in his treatise entitled 



Other TheoMES of Church and State. 157 

Alliance heticeen Church cincl State), It is briefly as 
follows (see Southern Presbyterian Seview, Vol. III., p. 
214, October, 1849): '^Cluircli and state are originally 
both independent and sovereign societies, liaving dif- 
ferent encls in view, and hence not clashing, although 
the same persons may be nnder the jurisdiction of 
both. The office of the state is to provide for the tem- 
poral interests of man. That of the church, for his 
eternal interests. The care of the one is confined to 
the hody, that of the other is directed to the soul. The 
one looks upon offences as crimes^ the other takes cog- 
nizance of them as vices and as sins. Now, as civil 
society can only restrain from open transgression, nor 
always from this without opening the way to crimes 
still more flagitious ; as it cannot enforce the duties of 
imperfect obligation; and further, often inflames the 
appetites it proposes to correct ; and as religion, hav- 
ing the sanction of rewards (while civil government 
has only that of punishment), exactly supplies these 
defects ; so the church becomes necessary as a com- 
plement to the state. The state, therefore, proposes 
to the church a union for their mutual benefit, and 
this union is called an ' alliance,' to indicate the origi- 
nal sovereignty of the parties. By this alliance the 
state pledges itself to endow, protect, and extend the 
church, and the church to lend her whole influence to 
the state. The reciprocal concessions are, that the 
church resigns her supremacy by constituting the civil 
ruler her supreme head, and by submitting her laws to 
the state's approval; and the state, in compensation, 
gives to the church a coactive power for the reforma- 
tion of manners, and secures her a seat and represen- 
tation in the national council. By this alliance the 
civil magistrate gets additional reverence, and the 
church a power which does not belong to her." 

In reference to this theory it is sufficient to sa^^ : 1st, 
That the church has no ''sovereignty," and, therefore, 
could form no such "alliance." 2nd, That while it is 
true that she supplies the deficiencies of civil govern- 



158 ECCLESIOLOGY. 

ment, it is also true that she does this most effectually 
when she is untrammelled and uncorrupted by any 
such mesalliance^ as all history shows. 3rd, That the 
''coercive" power she gets from the state is a power 
which does not belong to her, a power which tends to 
destroy that moral and spiritual power which does be- 
long to her, and to nullify her vocation as a witness 
for the truth. She must be like her Master (John 
xviii. 36, 37). 4th, The theory is inconsistent with it- 
self. The church and state are represented as sover- 
eign and independent, having each a life, a sphere, an 
aim, etc., etc., of its own; and yet the alliance is made 
necessary to the life of both. 

II. The Church of Scotland Theory, — The most il- 
lustrious defender of this theory is Dr. Chalmers, in 
his Lectures on the Establishment and Extension of Na- 
tional Churches. This is, in sum, that the church has 
a right to a ''legal provision for the expenses of its 
ministrations." The church does not, however, resign 
any portion of her independence. She receives from 
the state the maintenance of her clergy, and the clergy 
in return give to the subjects of the state a Christian 
education ; but they may and do reserve to themselves 
the whole power and privilege of determining what 
that education shall be. For their food and raiment, 
and their sacred, or even their private edifices, they 
may be indebted to the state; but their creed, disci- 
pline, ritual, articles of faith, formularias, whether of 
doctrine or devotion," etc., etc. 

Answer : (1), Such an establishment is as purely Uto- 
pian as Plato's republic. (2), The history of the church 
of Scotland refutes it all. (3), No state will, or ought 
to, support a church without holding the church ac- 
countable for the mode in which the funds are ex- 
pended. If the state pays for "education," she has a 
right to say what sort of education she is willing to pay 
for, and to enquire whether she is getting it. (4), Then 
the civil magistrate must be the judge as to matters of 



Other Views of Church and State. 159 

faith, Avhicli is the principle of all the persecutions 
which have cursed the earth, and of which the king- 
dom of Scotland has had its full share. (5), The spir- 
ituality of the church impaired. Moderatism in the 
kirk of Scotland. 

III. Gladstone's Theory. — i^Tlie State in its Relation 
with the Churchy by W. E. Gladstone, Esq., M. P. See 
also Macaulay's review of this work in his Miscella- 
nies}) The theory, in sum, is the same as that of Vat- 
tel and other old civilians, that civil government is in- 
stituted for the highest good of the whole in every 
concern, and is bound to do all in its power for tlus 
end in every department; that a commonwealth is a 
moral person^ having judgment, responsibility, etc., etc. 
(compare Theory of Territorial Jurisdiction^ page 162, 
below), and is, therefore, bound as a corporate person 
to recognize and obey the true religion. Hence the 
state, as a state, must have its religion. It must pro- 
fess this religion by state acts. It must have a relig- 
ious test for office, because otherwise the religious 
character of the state would be lost ; and it must use 
its state power to propagate this state religion. Mac- 
aulay's review showing that, upon these principles of 
Mr. Gladstone, every army, bank, railroad corpora- 
tion, would be bound to have its own religion, the au- 
thor, it is said, in his second edition modified his 
statement so as to make moral personality, etc., etc., 
the attributes only of those associations which have 
these three characteristics, viz. : (1), That they are of 
divine institution; (2), That they are perpetual; (3), 
That they are universal, that is, embracing everybody. 
These marks are found in two natural associations of 
men, as well as in the supernatural society of the 
church, the family and the state. Now, as all admit 
that the family must have a religion, so also must the 
state, for the same reasons. 

The simple answer to all this is : (1)., That it makes 
the state to tlo^j in the moral world, and it absorbs all 



160 ECCLESIOLOGY. 

other relations, both of the family and the church ; a 
Lacedaemonian theory of the state, and an Erastian 
annihilation of the church. (2), It contradicts plain 
definitions of the several spheres of the church, state, 
and family, as laid down in the Scriptures. (3), It is 
the parent of tyranny in the state, of formalism and 
hypocrisy in the church. 

IV. Dr. Arnold's Theory, — ( The Princijyles of Church 
RefoTin, The State and the Church, with other Essays, 
by Thomas Arnold.) This theory is expressed in the 
following extract (see Southern Presbyterian Review, 
VoL III. P..227) : ''Where a state chooses for itself the 
true religion, it declares itself Christian. But by so do- 
ing it becomes a part of Christ's holy catholic church, 
not allied with it, which implies distinctness from it, 
but transformed into it. But as for the particular 
portion of this church which may have existed before 
wdthin the limits of the state's sovereignty, the actual 
societj^ of Christian men there subsisting, the state 
does not ally itself with such a society, for alliance 
supposes two parties equally sovereign ; nor yet does 
it become the church as to its outward form and 
organization; neither does the church, on the other 
hand, become so lost in the state as to become, in the 
offensive sense of the term, secularized. The spirit of 
the church is transfused into a more perfect body, and 
and its former organization dies away. The form is 
that of the state, the spirit is that of the church ; what 
was the kingdom of the world has become a kingdom 
of Christ, a portion of the church in the high and spir- 
itual sense of the term; but in that sense in which 
church denotes the outward and social organization of 
Christians in any one particular place, it is no longer 
a Christian church, but what is far better and brighter, 
a Christian kingdom." Same thing, substantially, as 
that of the rationalists. (See Hertzog's Encyclopcedia 
suh voc. ''Church.") The answer to all this is contained 
in the last sentence, that the church ceases to exist 



Othek Views of Church and State. 161 

altogether. It is Erastianism in its boldest and 
extremest form. Tlie same theory really with that 
of Hobbes, only Dr. Arnold's leviathan is a pious 
beast. 

V. Tlie Popish Theory, — ( TJltrainoiitane). — The dif- 
ferent stages of its development may be seen in the 
claims of Hildebrand (1073-1085), Innocent III. (1198 
-1216), Boniface VIII. (1'294-1303). The doctrine, in 
brief, is that the pope is vicar of Christ ; and as Christ 
is the head of the church and head of all things 
besides, for the sake of his church, so the pope is the 
visible head of the church on earth, and all civil pow- 
ers are subject to his direction and power when- 
ever the interests of the church require it, of which the 
pope, and not the civil power, is the judge. The 
claim, in its extremest form, is contained in the BnU 
'' clericis laicos^' and in the message of Boniface VIII. 
to Philip the Fair, King of France (1296) Scire te volu- 
nnus quod in sjnritualibus, et temjjoralibus nobis siibes. 
Alind credentes, hmreticos repittamiis. And a sufl&cient 
answer to the claim is contained in the reply of Philip : 
Sciat maxina tua fatuitas, in teinporaliljxis nos alicui 
non suhesse. Secus credentes fatiios et deinentes rej^uta- 
mus. (See Kurtz's Church History, Sect. 140-'l.) It 
must be acknowledged, however, that as between TJl- 
tramontanisra and Gallicctnism, the former has the best 
of the argument from papal premises, accepted by 
both. (See Thornwell on the Apocrypha, Collected 
Writings, Vol. III., pp. 540 ff., for a full discussion 
and refutation of this abominable theory. (See also, 
for some concessions in regard to the effect of such 
claims upon the causes of civil freedom, p. 44 of the 
memoir of Dr. MuUer, prefixed to Robertson's trans- 
lation of his Sy7nholic.) The legitimate fruits of this 
Ultramontanism are seen in the Albigensian Crusades 
and the Inquisition. No surer evidence is needed to 
prove that the liar-m,urderer was the author of the 
theory. (See Gillespie's Assertion of the Government 



162 ECCLESIOLOGY. 

of the Church of Scotland, Part II., Cli. I. See on the 
Gallican Liberties, Gregorie — French papal bishop — 
Les Liherties de V Eglise Gallicane. ^') 

XV. 

Subject of Chukch Power. — Materia in qua. 

See Confession of Faith, Chap. XXX. Sec. 1. All 
church power (of which Christ, the head, is, as we 
have seen, the only source) is in serando actu, in the 
officers ; in primo actu, in the whole body. The life 
of the church is one ; officers are but the organs througii 
which it is manifested, in acts of jurisdiction and in- 
struction ; and the acts of all officers, in consequence of 
this organic relation, are the acts of the church. They 
are the principiurn quo ; she is the principiiun quod. 
The power resides in her; it is exercised by them. 
Ministers are her mouth as elders are her hands. 
Both equally represent her, and both are nothing, ex- 
cept as they represent her. All lawful acts of all law- 
ful officers, are acts of the church, and they who hear 

* By way of addendum attention may be called to the three theo- 
ries held in the Lutheran Church : 

1. The "Episcopal system," originated by Constantine the Great, in 
which the chief magistrate is head of the church (circa sacra), in vir- 
tue of his being the pi'cecipuum memhrum eccleske, in Constantine's case 
as Pontifex Maximus. 

2. The system of "territorial jurisdiction" (cujus regio, ejus teligio) 
according to which the chief magistrate is regarded as the head of the 
church, not as its chief member, but as the "father of his people, "and 
bound to look after all their interests. (Compare Vattel and Puffen- 
dorf, and Gladstone, as above.) 

3. The ' ' collegiate system, " according to which the three estates, 
which constitute the Eccleda synthetica, (to wit : ' ' Economic, " ' ' politi- 
cal," and "ecclesiastical") are all represented, differs from the first 
(the Episcopal system) in that it gives much greater prominence to the 
people {status economicus), while the "Episcopal" does not go behind 
the ministers (the stat. ecclesiasticus). It made the power to reside in 
all the three estates, but primarily, in the status economicus, which 
could transfer its authority to the civil ruler. It was called the ' ' col- 
legiate" system, because it made the ' ' jura in sac7'u" (doctrine, wor- 
ship, appointment to ministry, etc. Ju7'a collegialia (collective rights). 
See Kurtz's Church History, Vol. II. pp. 246-7. Hase's Dogmatic Evan- 
gel. (Protestant), p. 438, and Quenstedt, as quoted there. 



Subject of Church Power. 163 

the preacher or the presbytery, hear the church. The 
case is analogous to the motions of the human body. 
Vital power is not in the hands or the feet, it is in the 
whole body. But the exercise of that power in walk- 
ing, or in writing, is confined to particular organs. The 
power is one, but its functions are manifold, and it has 
an organ appropriate to every function. This makes 
it an organic whole. So the church has functions; 
these functions require appropriate organs; these 
organs are created by Christ, and the church becomes 
an organic whole. [ThornwelVs Writings, IV. pp. 
272-'3.) This theory is opposed to the popish and 
prelatic assumption, that the power resides in the 
clergy, and is transmitted in a certain line of succes- 
sion. The history of the very terms " clergy and 
laity" is the history of the growth of this grievous 
error in regard to the subject of church power. The 
terms are derived from two Greek words, yJ:fj[)oc:, lot or 
inheritance, and /«oc:, people. When it became fash- 
ionable for the pastors of the church to widen the dis- 
tance between their own order and the condition of 
their Christian brethren, the Christian commonwealth 
was by them divided into clergy and laity ; the former 
term was appropriated to themselves as selected and 
contradistinguished from the multitude, as being in 
the present world by way of eminence, God's pec idiiwi 
or special inheritance. (See Campbell's Lect. on 
Eccle. History, 9, p. 151.) This usage was derived, as 
was pretended, from the Old Testament, in which the 
tribe of Levi was called the inheritance of the Lord. 
But it so happens that the tribe of Levi is never 
called the inheritence of the Lord, as distinguished 
from the people, but only as a part included in the 
whole. — Moses, himself a Levite, says in an address to 
God (Deut. ix. 29), ''They (i. e. the whole nation), are 
thy people (Aao:;), and thine inheritance (x/.rjpo :;).'' In 
the LXX. version of this passage, the same persons are 
in the same sentence declared to be both / and x. In 
U 



164 ECCLESIOLOGY. 

the New Testament tlie term y. is applied to persons 
but in one passage (1 Pet. v. 3), and in that the term 
is applied not to the shepherds but to the flock, in op- 
position to the pastors. The Lord is said to be the 
inheritance of Levi (because that tribe had no landed 
possessions, but lived by the temple), but not vice 
versa. Strange the confusion about so simple a matter. 
Clemens Eomanus, indeed, uses the term ^^ Xacxoc'' to 
distinguish the mass of the Jews from the Levites (in- 
cluding the priests) ;^ and on this account, the use of 
the terms ''clergy and laity" is thought to be as old as 
his day. But, as Dr. Campbell observes {loc, sup. 
cit,), he is speaking of the Jeioish priesthood, not of 
the Christian ministry ; and he does not use it in op- 
position to any one general term, such as clericoi, but, 
after mentioning three different orders, he uses the 
term laicoi, to include under one comprehensive name 
all that were not specially comprised under any of the 
former — corresponding to the application sometimes 
made of the Latin word j96>/;^//ar^6^ {e. g. a citizen, one 
that is not a soldier). Li this vicAv it might be con- 
trasted with men in office of any kind whatever ; thus, 
in civil government, with ''rulers," to distinguish the 
people from the magistrate ; in an army with " generals," 
the soldiers from the commander. In this sense like idi- 
otes. (See Jlorsleys Tracts against Priestly ; Alexander 
on Acts iv. 13.) Even in its application to the Levitical 
economy, Clemens (as Dr. C. maintains) does not use it so 
as to imply that it was in itself exclusive of the priest- 
hood and of the tribe of Levi. They are indeed ex- 
cluded, because separately named, but not from the 
import of the word. Take an example from the New 
Testament (Acts xv. 22) : "Apostles and elders with the 
whole church." Here are three orders plainly men- 
tioned and distinguished (compare the phrase, " the 
law, the prophets and the scriptures" ; see Alexander's 
Isaiah, p. xix.), the apostles or extraordinary ministers, 

* Clement's words are " The High Priest, the Priests, the Levites and 
the laics. " 



Subject of Church Power. 165 

the elders or fixed pastors, and the church or Christian 
people."^' But does this imply that the name church 
does not properly comprehend the pastors as well as 
people? By no means. They are not, indeed, in this 
passage comprised under the term, not because it does 
not extend so far (which is not the fact), but because 
they are separately named. The import of the ex- 
j)ression is no more than this : the apostles and elders, 
with all the Christian brethren who come not under 
either of these denominations. So also 1 Pet. v., the 
presbyters are opposed to the cleroi, not as though the 
former constituted no part of God's heritage or clergy ; 
they only do not constitute that part of which they are 
here commanded to take the charge. So Clement's 
Iciicoi is ^'all the Jewish people." 

I have said that the history of these words is the 
history of the grievous error of popery and prelacy, 
which lodges church power in the ministry or clergy. 
The distinction of clergy and laity took its rise in the 
church about the same time with the rise of the doc- 
trine of a sacerdotal character in the ministry. 
Churches became temples, ministers, priests, and wor- 
ship, sacrifice. Now, under the law, the priesthood was 
a separate caste, the succession depending not upon 
election by the people, but upon birth ; and so also 
with the Levitical ministry in general. It was all a 
matter of birth. Consequently, although the whole na- 
tion of the Jews was called a " kingdom of priests," in a 
figurative sense, yet the power of the priesthood was 
not in the people, but in the family of Aaron alone. 
Hence the terrible judgment upon Korali and his fol- 
loAvers. When, therefore, the sacerdotal theory of the 
ministry began to prevail, and the Levitical priesthood 
was considered the type of the Christian ministry, it was 
inevitable that the ministry should become a caste, and 
the people become a flock of sheep only to be fleeced. 

* This is the division found in the Hebrew Scriptures, in Josephus and 
Philo. and alhided to in Luke xxiv. 44, where the ''Psalms" are men- 
tioned as representing the Hagiographa (or Scriptures. ) 



166 



ECCLESIOLOGY. 



Hence the privileges of the people began to be 
abridged, in the matter of electing their own church 
officers, until the settled doctrine of the church of 
Kome was thus expressed in the words of Bellarmine 
(See Clericis, Chap, vii., cited by Cunningham; see 
TlioriiwelVs Writhigs, IV. p. 271) : '' The election of 
pastors pertains to the government of the church. 
The people, therefore, ought not to elect their pas- 
tors." So long as they had the power of election it 
might appear as if the people was the body in which 
the vital force resided, and that the officers were 
merely the mouth, or hands, or feet. 

The same leaven of prelacy is manifested in the use 
of the terms '^ clergy and laity" by some in our own 
church. (See TliornweWs Wnlings, IV. p. 277.) Im- 
portant, therefore, to point out in what sense these 
terms may be used in harmony with the doctrine 
that all church power is, as to its heing^ in the whole 
church. (See ThornioelVs Writings, iit supra.) Clergy 
and laity are terms which in the New Testament are in- 
discriminately applied to all the jjeople of God. About 
this there can be no question. In the New Testament 
sense, therefore, every minister is a layman and every 
layman is a clergyman. In the common Protestant 
sense, the origin of which it is useless to trace (it is 
given above from Campbell), the terms express the dis- 
tinction between the office-bearers of the church and 
the people in their private capacity. A clergyman is a 
man clothed with the office of a Presbyter. Now, an 
office in a free government is not a raiih or a caste. It 
is not an estate of the realm. It is simply a public 
trust. A man, therefore, does not cease to belong to 
the people by being chosen to office. The president 
of the United States is still one of the people. The 
representatives in Congress are still among the people. 
Our judges and senators are still a part of the people. 
Office makes a distinction in relations — the distinc- 
tion between a private and a public man, but makes no 



Subject of Church Power. 167 

distinction in person or in rank. Office-bearers are 
not an order in the legal sense."'" ^" '^ To convey the 
idea that the distinctions induced by ordination are of- 
ficial, and not personal, our standards have studiously 
avoided the word clergy, which had been so much 
abused in the papacy, and substituted the more cor- 
rect expressions, offices and office-bearers. See Acts 
XX. 28, where bishops are said to be "in the flock" t 
(a part of the flock), not over it, as in our version. 
Power, then, is in ]y™^o acta, in the church as a 
body, an organic whole; the people and the rnlers 
are the organ of election. The officers elected are 
the organs by which the functions of teaching, 
government, and distribution of revenues are ex- 
ercised. And as the organs are, in a truer sense, given 
to the body than the body to the organs, so it is more 
proper to say that the ministry is given to the church 
than the church to the ministry. The former is Paul's 
mode of stating the case (Eph. iv. Cor. xii., Kom. xii.) ; 
the latter is the mode of the prelatists. 

II. Powder in actu secitndo, or as to its exercise, is 
in the officers of the church. This is opposed to the 
Congregational theory of church power, which makes 
it to reside in the people, both in actti primo and in 
actu secundo. When I say the Congregational theory, 
I do not mean that it was the accepted theory of the 
English Independents as a body, for John Owen held 
the true doctrine upon this point, as you may see by 
referring to his True Nature of a GosjJel Church, So 
far as a particular church is concerned, he was a Pres- 
byterian; but he was an Independent in denying that 
the church visible was one in any such sense as to 
warrant classical, synodical, or general assemblies. The 
Congregational theory to which I refer was defended 
by John Robinson, a portion of whose congregation 

* Compare the terms, ^' ordo and 'plebs" — wbicli are very different 
from clergy and laity. 

t Revised New Testament. 



168 EccLESioLoaY. 

in Holland constituted the colony of the Mayflower in 
1620. He was opposed, and his theory refuted, by 
the famous Samnel Rutherford, in a treatise entitled 
The Due BigM of Presbijteries, etc., London, 1644. 
The theory is called by Rutherford, ''The way of our 
New England brethren," and we may call it, therefore, 
the "New England Congregational theory." It is 
briefly this : that all power resides in church-members, 
in the brotherhood, and that they delegate this power 
to those whom they elect to bear office ; these office- 
bearers being deputies or proxies of the people, and 
doing only in the matter of government what the peo- 
ple themselves might of right do ; or, as it is given by 
Rutherford (I suppose from Robinson): ''The church 
which Christ, in his gospel, hath instituted, and to 
which he hath committed the keys of his kingdom; 
the power of binding and loosing the tables and seals 
of the covenant ; the offices and censures of his church ; 
the administration of all his public worship and ordi- 
nances, is a company of believers meeting in one place 
every Lord's day for the administration of the holy 
ordinances of God to public edification." [Right of 
Presbyteries, ch. 1, sec. 1, prop. 1.) In answer to this, 
Rutherford contends that "the keys," the power of 
binding and loosing, are not given to a company of 
believers, considered as an unorganized assembly, but 
to the organized church, an assembly under officers of 
their own choice ; and that this organized body is the 
"subject" of ecclesiastical power in actu 2y'i^'tno, and 
that the presbyters are the "subject" of the power of 
government in actu secundo^ or, as our Confession of 
Faith (xxx. 1) expresses it, the Lord Jesus is king and 
head of his church, and hath therein ajypointed a gov- 
ernment in the hands of church officers, distinct from 
the civil magistrate. The rulers of the church, there- 
fore, although the representatives of the people, are 
not their deputies or proxies ; are not responsible to 
them, though elected by them ; but are responsible to 



Subject of Church Power. 169 

Jesus Christ, who has ordained the constitution of the 
church, created these offices, and defined their func- 
tions. The difference between the Presbyterian and 
the New England Congregational theories may be il- 
lustrated by the difference between the true theory of 
our civil constitution and the false, though popular, 
theory of it. Our civil government is a representative 
republic. The source of all political power is the peo- 
ple, who ordain and establish a constitution, a funda- 
mental law, by which the exercise of the various de- 
partments of government is given to certain officers or 
bodies of officers, legislative, judicial, and executive, 
chosen or appointed in a certain way prescribed by 
the people in the constitution. Now, all these officers, 
whether in this department or in that, whether acting 
singly or jointly, represent the people, because they 
were chosen by the people, directly or indirectly. But 
they are, when chosen or appointed in a constitutional 
manner, not responsible to the people (that is, in the 
sense of ''constituents" or ''electors"), but to the law. 
The representatives in the legislature, and the execu- 
tive, and all other officers chosen by the popular vote, 
are responsible, not to their constituents, but to the 
constitution — "that is to say, not to the people who 
elected them, but to the people (sovereign) whose will 
is expressed in the constitution." So that, as Burke 
said to the electors of Bristol he had done, the repre- 
sentative is often compelled to maintain the interests 
of his constituents against their vnshes. (Thornwell, 
Vol. IV., page 100.) 

The popular theory, on the other hand, is that the 
will of the people, through the ballot-box, is the law ; 
that is, that our government is a democracy like . that 
of ancient Greece,, with this difference, that while in 
the old democracies the people assembled eii viasse, in 
ours they assemble by proxies or deputies. So in the 
church, Presbyterians hold that the rulers are repre- 
sentatives, deriving their authority, when once chosen 



170 ECCLESIOLOGY. 

to office by the people, not from the people, but from 
Jesus Christ, who ordained and established the con- 
stitution ; that the people have no share in the govern- 
ment, but only the right of choosing their governors ; 
while the New England theory is that the people gov- 
ern themselves, are themselves rulers, either en masse, 
or by proxies or deputies. The error upon which the 
New England theory is founded is that contained in 
the sentence already quoted from Bellarmine, that the 
election of pastors is a function pertaining to the gov- 
ernment of the church. Bellarmine, as we have seen, 
draws from this principle the conclusion that the peo- 
ple have no right to elect their pastors. The Inde- 
pendents in the Westminster Assembly, on the other 
hand, accepting the principle, drew the conclusion that 
the people have some share in the government of the 
church, and consequently that the Presbyterian doc- 
trine, w^hich excludes them altogether from govern- 
ment, must be false. The true way of meeting both 
extremes, papists and Independents, is by denying the 
principle and asserting with Ames, in his answer to 
Bellarmine, ^'Electio qiiavivis,'' etc. "Although elec- 
tion pertains to the constituting of government, it is, 
nevertheless, not an act of government." Dr. Hodge 
holds the same erroneous view, laying it down among 
the fundamental principles of Presbyterianism that 
the people ''have a right to a substantive part in the 
government of the church." (See Discourse on Pres- 
hyterianism, published by the Board of Publication, 
Princeton Pevieic, July number, page 547 ; Thornwell, 
Vol. IV. p. 274-'5 ff.) Hence he makes the ruling elder 
a mere expedient by which the people appear in church 
courts ; and the people appear, not as the church, con- 
sidered as a whole, but as a separate class or party, 
opposed to the clergy ; hence, again, the ruling elder is 
not a representative, but a deputy, a mere factor of the 
people. [Thornwell, ut sup.) More will be said on 
this subject when we come to consider the meaning of 



The Subject of Church Power. 171 

the term presbyter as an official designation, and the 
nature of Presbyterian government as representative. 

XVI. 

Officers of the Church. 

I. Officers in the apostolic church were of two kinds, 
extraordinary and ordinary. See Eph. iv. 11 ; 1 Cor. 
xii. 28, and compare, for the grounds upon which the 
extraordinary are defined to be temporary, 1 Cor. xiii. 
10, etc., with Warburton's exposition of the passage in 
his "-Doctrine of Gracer We shall consider the ordi- 
nary officers first, as those in which we have a practi- 
cal concern in the administration of the affairs of the 
church. (See Form of Govermnerit.) 

1. Bishops, or pastors, and elders. I put these to- 
gether because they are all designated in the New 
Testament by a GOVnuioniGTVii, preshyters. Our church 
derives its name from presbytery^ the government being 
lodged in the hands of courts consisting of presbyters. 
See the definition of Presbyterianism on page 194 
et seq. Our book uses the terms in the popular ac- 
ceptation " bishops or pastors," denoting the presby- 
ters who '4abor in the word and doctrine;" ''ruling 
elders" denoting the presbyters who rule only. In the 
New Testament all these terms are used interchange- 
ably. Take one example in which they all occur (or 
their equivalents) Acts xx. 17-28 : '^ Take heed there- 
fore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the 
Avhich the Holy Ghost hath made you ("presbyters" 
vs. 17) overseers (episcopos), to feed (perform the of- 
fice of a shep>herd or jjastor) the church of God," etc. 
"Presbyter" is the title of honor or respect, "bishop" 
the name designating the function, " pastor" the poet- 
ical name, and expressive chiefly of affection. 

There are three leading opinions as to the use of the 
term "presbyter" in the New Testament. First, That 
it denotes an officer inferior in order to the "bishop," 



172 ECCLESIOLOGY. 

and differing in function. Second^ That it denotes a 
preacher of the word, and cannot be applied to a ruhng 
elder. Thirds That it means a chosen ruler, and 
that, while it is used to denote pastors or ministers of 
the word, it is not so used because pastors are min- 
isters of the word, but because they are rulers; the 
shepherd having two staves, the one Beauty, the other 
Bands (Zecli. xi. 17), he is called presbyter on account 
of his staff Bands, his power of rule, and not on ac- 
count of his staff Beauty, his power of teaching. The 
first of these opinions is that of the prelatists, the 
second is that of the Con^regationalists generally, and 
of some leading men in our own church (Hodge, Smythe 
of Charleston, etc.), the third is that of our standards 
and of the strict constructionists, oy jure divino men, in 
our own church. Instead of considering each of these 
opinions separately, I shall establish the last as the 
true view of the term, and in so doing of course the 
other two will be overthrown. See a very clear, full, 
neat presentation of the evidence from our book and 
from Scripture on this point. Bead ThormoelVs Col- 
lected Wt-itings, Vol. IV. pp. 101-114: " That presby- 
ter as a title of oflice, etc." See Owens True Nature 
of Gospel Church, Ch. 7, (works) Vol. XX. pp. 472, et 
ff,;IiutlierforcTs Due Rigid of Presbyteries, pp. 141, 
etc. ; Miller on Ruling Elders. 

The classic place of the New Testament in proof that 
the term presbyter is not descriptive of a preacher as 
such, is 1 Timothy v. 17. The obvious meaning of 
these words, that which would suggest itself to any un- 
biased reader, is, that there are two sorts of presby- 
ters, one sort ruling only, the other laboring in the 
word and doctrine, as well as ruling. The term '' pres- 
byter," therefore, is applied to an officer in the Chris- 
tian church who does not ^' labor in the word and doc- 
trine ;" and if so, the word cannot designate tlie func- 
tion of preaching, and cannot be applied to preachers 
only. When applied to a preacher it must be on ac- 



Officers of the Church. 173 

count of some function other tlian preaching, which he 
performs, and this function is explained to be that of 
ruhng. The general sense of the term, therefore, is a 
ruler. It follows from this statement : 1. That it is a 
false induction to collect together a bundle of passages 
in which presbyters are mentioned, who were un- 
questionably preachers, and then, without pausing to 
inquire whether there may not be ^'negative in- 
stances" (as Bacon calls them), or whether the real 
ground has been discovered of the application of the 
term, to lay it down as an axiom that the scriptural 
presbyter is a minister of the word. " The negative in- 
stance is the most powerful." Compare reasoning of 
Baptists about haptizo. 

To produce a thousand texts in which the words 
presbyter and preacher appeared to be interchangeable 
would signify nothing, if a single case could be alleged 
in which they were evidently of different import. In 
such a contingency, the dictate of sound philosophy 
and sober criticism would be to inquire whether there 
were not some property common to both terms, in con- 
sequence of which the affirmative and negative in- 
stances might be fairly harmonized. A definition 
should be sought embracing the points in which those 
who were and those who were not preachers agreed. 

This definition would include all that is essential to 
the meaning of the title, and would set forth the pre- 
cise ground on which it is attributed to either class. 
Now this common property, the essence of the presby- 
terate, is given in the passage in Timothy. It is the 
function of ruling. To affirm in the face of this scrip- 
ture that all elders are teachers, is no less absurd than 
to affirm, in the face of experience, that all that are 
mortal are men. There are only two other interpreta- 
tions, so far as I know, deserving of notice : 1, Vitrin- 
ga's [D.e Syn. Yet.), that all presbyters w^ere ordained to 
preach as well as rule ; but that, in fact, they did not 
all preach. 2, That the emphasis is on the word 



174 ECCLESIOLOGY. 

xoTT (laboring to wearmess.) According to this inter- 
pretation ministers are represented as worthy of 
"double honor" who do not labor "to weariness." 
According to Vitringa's, men are ordained to do that 
which they are not expected to do. 

2. It follows that the objection which is taken from 
the use of the word deacon has no force. The objec- 
tion is thus stated : " As the Greek word for deacon is 
nsed in a general sense for all church officers, and yet 
is the specific title of one particular class of officers ; so 
the word presbyter may be taken in a wide sense, in- 
cluding even apostles, and is yet the definite title of 
ordinary ministers of the word, and is never applied in 
its specific sense and without qualification to any who 
are not ministers;" i, 6., presbyter, from being a ge- 
neric term, susceptible originally of a larger extension, 
became eventually the definite title of a particular 
class. It is a universal law of classification, that what 
logicians call the whole comprehension of the gemts, or 
every idea which enters into a just definition of the 
name of a class, must be found in cdl the species which 
are included under it. This is the only ground on 
which the genus can be predicated of the subordinate 
classes. Hence, if the word presbyter is generic, and 
in its full comprehension capable of being affirmed of 
other classes of men, besides ministers of the gospel, 
the idea of preaching cannot enter as an element into 
a definition of the genus. The specific differences 
which distinguish the various classes under a common 
name, cannot be included in the definition of that name. 
If preachers, accordingly, constitute a species of the 
genus presbyter, and some who are not preachers con- 
stitute another, it is intuitively obvious that the com- 
prehension of the generic term excludes the property 
of preaching. The specific difference of the classes 
consists in the possession in the one case and the ab- 
sence in the other, of lawful authority to preach. 
Hence the authority to preach could not be the ground 



Officers of the Church. 175 

of the term presbyter being applied to preachers in a 
restricted sense (even if such restricted sense existed), 
but some property belonging to the comprehension of 
the gaiius. And this, for all that appears to the con- 
trary, may be the function of ruling. Illustrate by 
'' deacon," and show how this example makes for us. 
{ThornwelllN, p. 109.) 

The history of the term elder, or presbyter, or zctken, 
shows that its primary and common meaning is that of 
^' ruler" and not ''teacher." It has reference primarily 
to superiority in j^ears. Now the earliest form of gov- 
ernment being the patriarchal, the patriarch or elder 
being the governor, nothing was more natural than that 
elder should come to mean governor when used of offi- 
cial station; afterward, such terms came to be used in 
all languages as terms of respect or reverence, since re- 
spect belongs both to age alid office — senior, signore, 
seigneur, sire (lord and father), sieu7% monsieur, senator, 
alderman. First age; then authority; then respect — 
this seems to be the history of the word. So also the 
terms pastor and bishop, which we have seen to be 
used interchangeably with elder, properly denote gov- 
ernment, not teaching."^'' 

Pastor, or shepherd, in the Old Testament, is gen- 
erally used in this sense, and where it is used of a 
teacher, the ground of such application is probably the 
tendency of teaching to regulate the life. In our ver- 
sion, this usage does not always appear, because the 
expression to "feed " is very often used to represent 
the word for performing the office of a shepherd. But 
in the following passages there can be no doubt of the 
meaning of the term : Ezek. xxxvii. 24, where shepherd 
and king are used as synonymous; Ezek. xxxiv. 24, 25, 
where shepherd and prince are the same ; 1 Chron. xi. 2. 

So in the New Testament, Kev. ii. 27, ''ruling" with 

* For a conclusive argument from the earlier Fathers, see Spirit of 
the XIX. Ventary (1843), pp. 621 ff, by Thornwell, in his " Collected 
Writings,'' Vol. IV., pp. 115 ff. 
15 



176 ECCLESIOLOGY. 

a rod of irou, is "slieplierding" with a rod of iron; 
Matt. ii. 6, the governor shall shepherd my people Is- 
rael; and in Eph. iv. 11, if pastors are not rulers, 
there is no mention made of rulers at all. In the 
classic Greek writers, reference may be made to Ho- 
mer, in whom "shepherd" is constantly used for 
'' king," T.otujyLao)^. 

Bishoj?, as a title of office, is properly applicable to 
a subordinate class of rulers, who, possessing no inde- 
pendent powers of their own, are appointed to see that 
duties enjoined upon others are faithfully discharged. 
They differ from the higher order of magistrates in 
having no original authority, and in being confined to 
the supervision of others in the department committed 
to their care. They have no power to prescribe the 
law, they can only see that its precept is obeyed. 
Their functions seem to be exactly expressed by the 
English word "overseer." The subordinate magistrates 
sent out h\ Athens to take care of her interests in trib- 
utary cities were styled episcopoi. 

Homer, to inculcate the doctrine that the gods will 
protect the sanctity of treaties, calls them the bishops 
of covenants. (II. xxii. 255.) Hector, as the guardian 
and defender of Troj^ is lamented by Andromache, 
under the same title. (II. xxiv. 729.) So in the 
LXX., in Numbers xxxi. 14, officers of the host are 
" einscopoV of the host. See also Judges ix. 28, 30, 
where bishop and ruler of the city are the same; 
Nehemiah xi. 9, 14, 22, a ruler of the specified division, 
not a teacher. In the Apocrypha, see 1 Maccabees, i. 
51. The first meaning Hesychius gives to " episcopos^' 
is "king." In 1 Mac. x. 37, an'Aoi^zi:: is used, bishops 
(overseers) appointed by Antiochus Epiphanes. 

Lastly : This is the sense in which our standards ex- 
plain the term "presbyter." {Thormcell, IV., p. 105.) 
It says {Form of Govermnent, Ch. IV. Sec. 2, kxi. 1) that 
the reason Avhy the pastor (or minister) is called p)''^^- 
hyter is, that it is his duty to be grave and prudent, and 



Officers of the Church. 177 

an example of the flock, and to govern well in the 
house and kingdom of Christ. Compare this now with 
the reasons assigned for calling him " ambassador" or 
" steward," and nothing can be plainer than that of set 
purpose, our standards define presbyter in such a w^ay 
as to make the definition as applicable to a ruling- 
elder as to a pastor (commonly so called). The 
preacher shares in common with the deacon the title 
of minister, because both are appointed to a service ; 
and he shares, in common Avith the ruling elder, the 
title of presbyter, since both are appointed to rule. 
Our standards also quote 1 Tim. v. 17, in Ch. V. of the 
old book, in proof of the divine right of the office of 
ruling elder, implying a judgment that presbyter 
means ruler. Neither the word of God, therefore, nor 
our standards, countenance the notion that presbyter 
rireans preacher. See Gieseler, Vol. I. pp. 56, 57, etc., 
who contends that elder and bishop were the same, and 
that neither term had any reference to teaching. He 
goes too far, however, in asserting that the term is not 
used of those who did teach. 

Here, then, we have one fundamental principle of 
Presbyterianism (see the traces of this doctrine even in 
Rome — Cunningham's Chiiixh Princ'qjles p. 159, and 
Historical Theology, Vol. IL, p. 251), a principle by which 
it is distinguished from other evangelical churches, to 
wit: that there is one order of presbyters or chosen 
rulers, that in this order there are two classes, like the 
geirtts and its co-ordinate species : 1, Presbyters who 
rule only; 2, Presbyters who not only rule, but also la- 
bor in the word and doctrine ; and both these classes 
entering into the composition of the church's parlia- 
mentary assemblies, we have an exemplification of the 
same principle which is exemplified in our civil legis- 
latures by two houses, an expedient which is as great 
an improvement upon the representative principle as 
that principle is over the principle of the old democ- 
racy. 



178 ECCLESIOLOGY. 

XYII. 

Presbyteries — Congregational. — '' Sessions." "^^ 

See Owen, Vol. XXII., pp. 481 et seq., for the principle 
in its application to a single congregation (which is the 
only visible church which as an Independent he ac- 
knowledges.) See Form of Government, Ch. V., Sec. 3 ; 
K. J. Breckinridge's speech on " Presbyterian Govern- 
ment not a Hierarchy bnt a Commonwealth" ; Thorn- 
icell, Vol. IV., pp. 43, ff. In opposition on one hand to 
prelacy, which puts the government of the church into the 
hands of single men, and may therefore be called the 
monarchical form, and on the other to Congregational- 
ism, v^^hich puts the government into the hands of the 
people or brotherhood, and maj^, therefore, be called a 
democracy, Presbyterianism is distinguished by a 
government in representative assemblies, and may 
therefore be called a republic or representative com- 
monwealth. {Form of Government, Chap. V., Sec. 1, 
Art. 1.) We agree with Congregationalists against the 
prelatists in holding that the power of rule is a joint 
and not a several power ; but we differ from the Con- 
gregationalists in this, that while they put the power 
in the hands of the people en masse, or in their depu- 
ties, we put the power in the hands of presbyters as- 
sembled in presbyteries, these presbyters being the 
chosen representatives of the people, yet according to 
the principles already stated under the head of the 
" Subject of Church Power," deriving their authority 
from Christ the head of the church and the author of 
its constitution. 

1. The first step in the proof is to show that there 
was a plurality of elders or bishops in eveiy church in 
the times of the apostles. This is to be proved not 
onlj^ against the prelatists, but against the Congrega- 
tionalists also. The Congregationalists of England 

*See Psa. cvii. 32, and Alexander in he 



Presbyteries — Congregational. — Sessions. 179 

and of New England^ as a general if not a universal 
rule, have but one elder, avIio is a teaching elder. (See 
The Biding Eldership^ by Eev. David King of Glas- 
gow ; Pittsburg United Presbyterian Board of Educa- 
tion, I860.) And many leading Congregationalists 
have contended that this was the practice in the primi- 
tive church ; but other leading Congregationalists, such 
as Dr. Wardlaw in his Congregational Independency, 
Dr. Vaughan in his Congregationalisni, and Dr. Da- 
vidson in his Ecclesiastic Polity, have of late years 
admitted (according to King, from whom these refer- 
ences are taken), that in the primitive church there 
was a plurality of elders in each church. They con- 
tend,* however, that these elders were all preachers, 
which has been shown to be a mistake. If they will, 
however, carry out their own convictions and make a 
plurality of preaching elders in anj' church, they will 
soon find that the circumstances will compel the most 
of their elders to become ruling elders only, and thus 
their organization will become practically the same as 
ours. But to the proof. (See Acts xi. 30, xiv. 23 ; 
XV. 2, 4, 6, 22; xvi. 4; xx. 17; 1 Tim. v. 17; PhiL i. 
1 ; Titus i. 5 ; 1 Peter v. 1.) These references are 
taken from Ov:ens Nature of a Goypel Church : Works, 
XX., p. 481, and Owen was an Independent, and not a 
Congregationalist. The argument from these passages 
is this : A plurality of elders or bishops is spoken of 
as existing in the church of Jerusalem, the church of 
Ephesus, the church of Philippi, etc. Now the word 
church in such passages means either a particular 
church, a single congregation of the faithful, or it 
means a church consisting of several congregations 
united under one government. If it means a single 
congregation, then both Congregationalists and prela- 
tists must give up their theories ; the former must as- 
sert that in every congregation, however small, there 
were many preachers, and admit, consequently, that 
their present practice is unscriptural in having only 



180 EcCLESlOLOGY. 

one. The latter must admit there were several bish- 
ops in each congregation, and, therefore, that these 
bishops were not diocesan. If the word church in 
such passages, on the other hand, means several con- 
gregations united under one government, then the In- 
dependents must give up the distinctive principle of 
their sect, that a single congregation is the only visi- 
ble church known to the New Testament ; and the pre- 
latists must give up their principle, that the church is 
governed by a single bishop instead of a presbytery. 
But this last point will appear more clearly hereafter. 
Here note that Schaff (see Apostolic CJaiTcli^ sec. 132, 
p. 526), although he differs from his master, Neander, 
as to the nature of the office denoted by the term pres- 
byter, denying what Neander affirms, that presbyter 
denotes two classes of rulers — a teaching and non- 
teaching class — yet contends that in Acts xiv. 23, Ti- 
tus i. 5, the force of kata is adverbial, not collective, 
and that the meaning, therefore, is that elders were 
ordained in each city (city bj- city, church by church), 
not as Baur and others assert, one presbyter in each 
city or church. 

2. The next step in the argument is to show that 
these elders in each church constituted a parliament 
or court for the government of said church, or in other 
words, that they ruled jointly and not severally. We 
argue this : First, From the nature of the case. If 
they were all rulers of equal authority there could be 
no decency or order in the exercise of their power ex- 
cept by agreement ; that is, by an agreement of the 
majority. There must have been deliberation, con- 
ference, interchange of views, and a vote which made 
the action the action of the whole governing body. 
(Compare Acts xv., the account of the proceedings of 
the council at Jerusalem.) Second, From 1 Tim. iv. 
14, compared with Acts xxii. 5, and Luke xxii. 66. 
The lexicographers (see Schleusner, in voc.) give as 
the meaning of preshytevion a college of elders, or a 



PeESBYTEEIES — OoNGEEaATIONAL. — SESSIONS. I8l 

senate, implying an organized body, a corporate unit, 
of which the elements are presbyters. There can be 
no doubt of this being the meaning of the terms in 
Luke xxii.''^ and Acts xxii., for in these places it denotes 
the sanhedrin, the highest court in the Jewish church 
and state. But in the place of 1 Tim., so high an au- 
thority in Hebrew antiquities as Selden (De Synedris, 
L. I, c, 14, cited by Vitringa, De Synag. Vet. L. 2, c. 
12), asserts that it means the presbyterate, the office 
of presbyter ;t as if Paul intended to say, ''Neglect 
not the gift that is in thee, which was given thee by 
prophecy, with the imposition of hands, by which im- 
position thou wast made a presbyter, or endowed with 
the presbyterate." To this it is sufficient to reply: 1, 
That it is not very likely that a word which is used 
only in three places of the New Testament should in 
two of them designate, beyond all doubt, a college or 
council of presbyters; and in the remaining one the 
office of a presbyter. So that, while it is admitted, so 
far as the termination of the word is concerned, no 
argument can be made for one meaning or the other, 
the prevailing usage is in favor of a council or col- 
lege of persons possessing the presbyterate, and not 
the presbyterate itself. 2, A comparison of this pas- 
sage with 2 Tim. i. 6 (as Vitringa suggests in loc. sup. 
cit.), shows that the genitive here is not the genitive 
of the thing conferred, but of the body conferring ; 
raou in this passage standing in the same relation to 
''hands" as " presbj^tery " does in the other. In the 

*In Lnke xxii. %^, the " Tipeaf^'' seems to be distinguished from the 
" aDVZ^f)CO)J " ; but it must, in any case, denote a collection of elders. 
("Estate of the elders," in Acts xxii. 5, both in A. V. and Rev.) In 
the Eevision of 1881, the word is rendered in this place, " Assembly of 
the Elders," but in 1 Tim. iv. 14, "Presbytery," as in the A. V. 

t Calvin in his Institutes (B. iv. c. 3, U 16) takes this view also ; but 
in his commentary on 1 Tim. i. 14, he takes the view here defended. 
The commentary on 1 Tim. was published in 1556 ; the last edition of 
the Institutes in 1559. Cftlvin died 1564. 



182 EccLEsioLoaY. 

one, the gift is said to be conferred by the laying on of 
the hands of Paul ; in the other, by the laying on of 
the hands of the presbytery. Preshyterion, therefore, 
is the canse and not the effect of the imposition of 
hands. 3, This use is sanctioned by the writings of 
Ignatius, which the prelatists are so fond of quoting, 
but wdiich have all been proved to be forgeries. 
[Killi/is Ancient Church ; see citations in Vitringa, as 
above cited.) He calls the presbyters of the Trallean 
church 'Hhe sanhedrin of God." Vitringa refers also 
to Theodoret, Chrvsostom and Theophylact, as giving 
the interpretation which we have defended. Perhaps 
Avords terminating like presbxtterion belong to the same 
class with such words as prsetorium, originally de- 
noting the 7J>Za6'6 of business. Some of this class of 
words might be transferred to denote the officer or 
bod}^ of officers doing business in the place. Some- 
times, again, the fact of sitting together, or the mode of 
sitting, gives name to the body, as session, consistory, 
sanhedrin, or even the nature of the seat, as ''divan" 
(cushion). Compare the use of the word ''church" 
for the body of believers and for the house where they 
assemble; also sjmagogue, etc., etc. Jerome seems to 
have had this word in his mind in that famous passage 
of his commentary on Titus i. 7, which has excruciated 
so much the prelatical patrolaters. (See it in full in 
Gieseler, Vol. I., p. 56, note. Idem est, etc.) 

We have thus proved that in the apostolic church 
the government of single congregations was in assem- 
blies called presbyteries, because composed of presby- 
ters — these presbyters being of two kinds, teaching 
and ruling elders. This is the very government which 
in modern times, among free nations, has been con- 
sidered the most perfect, or, to use the language of 
Milton, "the noblest, the manliest, the equalest, the 
justest government" on earth — a government by repre- 
sentatives, not by the people in j^'oj^fria jjersona, or by 
deputies ; and these representatives not all of the same 



Presbyteries — Congregational . — Sessions . 183 

class, but of different classes, so that, as the represen- 
tative principle is itself a check upon the excesses of 
the democratic principle, the two classes of represen- 
tatives constitute a check upon the evils incident to re- 
presentation by one class. 

Both these principles are recognized in the civil con- 
stitutions of this countiy — the principle of representa- 
tion, and of representation by two classes of represen- 
tatives, "senators" and ''representatives." The apos- 
tles seem to have put special honor on this government 
by sitting themselves as elders in settled churches, 
especially toward the close of their ministry, when 
the church was so far established as to be ready to 
pass out of the state of infancy and childhood into 
that of manhood. (1 Cor. xiii. 8-11 ; see Acts xv. 
2, 4, 6, 22; 2 Tim. i. 6; compare with 1 Tim. iv. 14; 1 
Peter v. 1.) 

An incidental confirmation of this government hj 
presbyteries may be derived from the concessions of 
Independents. These concessions are made in two 
ways: First, in words. (Beside the quotations from 
King in the beginnino- of this lecture, see 2fillet^ on 
Baling Elders, Chap. 7, who quotes largely both from 
English and New England Independents.) Second, in 
practice. (See Miller as before. Chap. 8, p. 186 ; King 
on the ElclersJiijj, Part I., pp. 27-32.) Although Inde- 
pendents contend that the discipline of the church is 
in the hands of the brotherhood by divine right, yet in 
practice they find that a promiscuous ••church-meet- 
ing" is an assembly very unhappih^ constituted for 
judicial purposes; and the tendency has been to rem- 
edy the evil in one of two ways : first, bj- making the 
pastor or elder sole ruler, that is, by converting the 
democracy into a monarchy ; "^ or, second, by associat- 
ing with tJie pastor a few^ of the most godly and pru- 
dent men in the congregation as an advisoiy commit- 

* A Democracy always tends toward the centralization of power. 



184 ECCLESIOLOGY. 

tee — a sort of eldership, with the disadvantage of be- 
ing unordained, and unpledged to support the consti- 
tution. Dr. King gives some quotations from Inde- 
pendent writers, such as Davidson, James, Campbell, 
asserting for the pastor of a congregation a degree of 
power which Presbyterians would be very far from 
conceding to the pastors of their congregations. (See 
King on the EldersMiD^ page 15, footnote.) The more 
common method, however, is the second above named, 
the selection of a committee. But this expedient, 
though a concession to our principles, is far from be- 
ing as efficient or wholesome, for the very obvious 
reason that these quasi ruling elders are made by the 
pastor and not chosen by the people, and that they 
are temporary officers, not permanent, and that for the 
reason already assigned, they are under no engage- 
ment of faithfulness to the constitution of the church. 
We might argue also from the concessions, in words 
and in practice, of Episcopalians. But I simply refer 
you to Miller on Riding Elders, Ch. 6, and Ch. 7, page 
185, and on the Christian Ministry, Ch. 8. That these 
presbj^teries must consist of two sorts of presbyters, 
so far as the sphere of a particular congregation is con- 
cerned, is conceded by all who admit government by 
presbyteries at all. The onty question upon this point 
concerns the higher courts, ''classical" presbyteries in 
particular. I shall reserve, therefore, the discussion 
of this point till we reach the subject of the manner 
in which the idea of the unity of the church is realized 
in the Presbyterian government. Meanwhile note that 
our inquiries have led us to two fundamental princi- 
ples of Presbyterianism : 1st, The principle of repre- 
sentative government — of government by parliament- 
ary courts composed of presbyters duly appointed and 
ordained ; 2nd, That these representatives must be of 
two classes, belonging to the one order of 7^r^6'J?/^e;\^. 
They all of them belong to the one order of rulers, and 
only as rulers, chosen rulers or representatives of the 



Presbyteries — Classical, Synodical, General. 185 

people, can they appear in any of these courts, — pres- 
byters who rule only, and presbyters who both rule 
and labor in the word and doctrine. This answers to 
the two houses in modern legislation. Presbyteries 
are not divided, however, into two houses (each class 
of presbyters deliberating and voting separately), be- 
cause presbyteries are courts, and are required to act 
as units. Note that the elders who rule only are called 
''representatives of the people," not because they only 
are representatives of the people and ministers are 
not, but because it is a complete description of their 
office. 

Compare the use of the terms senator and repre- 
sentative. It does not imply that the Senate is not a 
body of representatives because the other house is 
called the House of' Representatives. Both houses 
consist of representatives ; the lower house of Congress 
is so called because the title is a complete description 
of their office. The Senate discharges executive as well 
as legislative functions. 

XVIII. 

Presbyteries — Classical, Synodical, General. 

[See Form of Government, Ch. V., Sec. 1, Arts. 1, 2 ; 
Confession of Faith, Ch. XXXI, Sec. 1. See also Divine 
Right of Church Qovernment, by the London minis- 
ters, Pt. II., Chs. XIIL, XIV., X:V., p. 177, etc., of the 
New York edition of 1844, by R. Martin & Co. Dick's 
Theological Lectures, 99, Vol. II., pp. 448, et seq., of 
Carter's edition. New York, 1851. Principal HilVs 
Theology, B. 6, Ch. II., Sec. 2, pp. 591, et seq., of Hooker's 
edition, Philadelphia, 1844. Rutherford's Due Right 
of Preshyteries. Killens Ancient Church, p. 248, et 
seq.. New York, Scribner, 1859; also of the same, pp. 
605, et seq. Miller on Ruling Elders, Ls. 1, 2, 3. R. 
J. Breckinridge' s Sermon on the Christian Pastor, pp. 
25, 26. Thornwell, Vol. IV., pp. 134, ff.] 



186 ECCLESIOLOGY. 

All these sorts of presbyteries are named together 
because the same principle underlies them all. When 
we have once determined that two congregations [coetus 
fideliurii) can be connected together in government, 
we have demolished the fundamental principle of In- 
dependency, and established a fundamental principle 
of Presbyterianism. It is a matter of no consequence, 
then, how much the number of congregations may be 
increased, the principle upon which they are united 
is the same, and the arrangement of the courts, their 
number, extent of territory, etc., is an affair to be 
determined by human wisdom, accommodating its 
plans to the circumstances of the case, with a view to 
decency, order and general edification. Mountains, 
rivers, political divisions, language and other circum- 
stances do and must modify our attempts to realize, 
in any external form, the idea of the unity of the 
church. 

I. The principle which justifies the union of several 
congregations under one government has just been 
suggested : it is the unity of the cliitreh. I am aware 
that the idea of unity can never be perfectly realized, 
in an external organization, upon earth, and the at- 
tempts which have been made for that purpose, from 
the days of Cyprian to the present, have only served 
to sacrifice the substance of unity to the shadow. Still 
the Independent and the Presbyterian cite with equal 
approval (see R. IlalVs Terms of Cornmumon, WorT^s^ 
p. 289, Vol. I., Harper's edition, 'd?[i^ Miller on Ruling 
Elders, p. 16), the splendid description b}^ the Bishop 
of Carthage of the church as one. In the strict and 
proj)er sense, unity is an attribute of the church invisi- 
IdIc, and exists in perfection only in the mystical body 
of Christ ; yet even Independents acknowledge (see 
Hall, as above), that there ought to be some anxiety 
and some effort to exhibit it externally. 

"Nothing can be more abhorrent," says this elo- 
quent writer, "from the principles and maxims of the 



Presbyteries — Classical, Synodical, General. 187 

sacred oracles than the idea of a phirahty of true 
churches, neither in actual communion with each 
other, nor in a capacity for such communion," and 
well may he say so. (See Eph. iv. 3-6; 1 Cor. xii. 
12, etc., X. 17; John xvii., ^;<:/^mm. (See Mason on the 
Charch, No. 1, ''Plea for Communion," P. I., pp. 9, 
et seq.) So glaring is this doctrine of the unity of the 
church, even as a visible church catholic, in the sacred 
Scriptures, that it is unconsciously recognized even 
by those Christians whose church organizations pro- 
ceed upon a denial of it. They talk habitually of the 
church, the faith of the church, the worship of the 
church, the sufferings of the church, God's dealings 
with his church, and a thousand like things. Let 
them ask what ttiey mean by such expressions. They 
will not say "a particular congregation"; and if they 
say "the election of grace," they will speedily contra- 
dict themselves, and fact, and the word of God too. 
[Mason.) The unhappy division of the church into 
sects has been the chief means of obscuring the idea 
of her unity ; and, therefore, in this discussion we con- 
fine ourselves to one denomination, or to the church 
before sects existed. The question, then, is, is the 
visible church one in any such sense as to warrant 
the union of two or more congregations under the 
same government? I answer in the affirmative, for 
the following reasons : 

1. From the nature and ends of church fellowship. 
The union of believers with Christ and each other is the 
source of communion with each other. This com- 
munion is involuntary, or spontaneous where the union 
is real. As a man cannot help feeling sympathy with 
his fellowmen, because he and they possess the same 
nature — as one member of the body cannot help sym- 
pathizing with the other members, because they possess 
the same life, so one believer nvust sympathize with 
other believers. It is the very nature of the spiritual 
life which they all possess in common. God has made 
16 



188 Egclestology. 

them so. But as God has ordained the family and the 
state that the natural fellowship of men may be ex- 
pressed and strengthened, so he has ordained the 
church that the fellowship he has instituted among his 
people may be promoted by joining in the observance 
of common ordinances of worship, and by obedience 
to common rules of government. They all have the 
same end in view, the glory of God in their own salva- 
tion and in the salvation of mankind. Every Christian 
is as much interested in the consistent walk and growth 
in grace of every other Christian as he is in his own ; 
and is therefore as much concerned in the purity of 
the faith and the holiness of the life of other congre- 
gations as he is in those of his own. In the matter, 
for example, of the character of ministers of the word, 
their training, their soundness in doctrine, their godli- 
ness, they all are equally interested. Why not then 
commit the whole affair of examining, licensing, or- 
daining, installing, removing, and judging ministers to 
a body of presbyters representing all the congregations 
within a certain district, and common to them all ? 
Again, in cases of conscience, in questions of doctrine 
or discipline which are of common concern to all con- 
gregations, is there not the same reason for having 
such matters decided hj a court representing all, as 
there is for Christians of a single congregation uniting 
in submission to a court of their own in ordinary 
cases of discipline ? So also in the application of the 
rules of discipline to particular cases. The presbytery 
in a particular church is sometimes so small, or the 
members so liable to bias and prejudice by reason of 
their relationship to parties in a cause, as to make it 
inexpedient for the court to issue, if not to investigate 
the cause ; and there ought to be a provision by which 
the cause can be " referred" {Rales of Discipline Ch. 
XIII. , Sec. 2), to a court representing a larger section of 
the church, or several congregations. Or the session 
of a particular church may, through ignorance or un- 



I 



Presbytekies — Classical, Synodical, General. 189 

faithfulness, take no steps to institute process, or in 
conducting process may violate the moral or legal, 
rights of accused parties, or may, in issuing a case, vio- 
late the plainest dictates of justice. There ought to be, 
therefore, provisions made for ^'reviewing" [Rides of 
Discij)line, Cli. XIII., Sec. 1), or judging by ''appeal" 
(Sec. 3 of the same chapter), or ''complaint," (Sec. 4) 
by some higher court, the doings of the lower. These 
principles are acknowledged in the constitution of the 
judiciary in every free commonwealth. The necessity 
of some such arrangement is more clearly seen in the 
matter of the discipline of ministers of the gospel for 
heresy or immorality (specially the former) than in 
anything else. Heresiarchs are generally plausible, 
and if the responsibility of judging a minister rests 
upon a single congregation, or upon the rulers thereof, 
it is not difficult to see how unequal the contest is 
likely to be between truth and justice on the one hand, 
and error, or even immorality, combined with talents 
and personal popularity on the other. The history of 
Congregationalism in this country is very instructive 
upon this point. It has shown itself powerless either 
to prevent or to remedy the inroads of error. Once 
more, the church is not merely to maintain itself, but 
to extend itself. Its great vocation is to be a witness 
for Christ, and the sphere of its testimony is no nar- 
rower than the world. How can it accomplish its mis- 
sionary work except by union ? For all purposes of 
aggression, unity of counsel and effort is the first and 
fundamental prerequisite. This is signally illustrated in 
the history of Jesuitism and Methodism. I grant that 
in these instances efficiency in aggression has been 
purchased at too great an expense. The individuality 
of the laborers has been impaired and almost destroyed. 
Still, extreme cases illustrate best the operation of prin- 
ciples. An autocracy is more eflicient in a war of in- 
vasion than a democracy. Popery and Methodism 
have gone everywhere in this country. Congregation- 



190 ECCLESIOLOGY. 

alismhas been established only wliere Congregational- 
ists liave gone before in large numbers. Congregation- 
alism can conduct foreign missions only by irresponsi- 
hle boards of commissions or associations. Presbyte- 
rianism conducts them through its regular courts, which 
are representative bodies ; and it is the only system 
which combines efficiency of aggressive operations 
with the full preservation and development of indi- 
vidual life. Its members are not mere spokes in a 
wheel ; they are wheels within awheel. The missionary 
work is an essential part of the calling of the church ; 
union under one government is essential to the proper 
prosecution of this work. Ergo, union under one gov- 
ernment, is essential to the church's calling. 

2. From the concessions of Independents. First, 
in words. (See Oicens True Nature of a Gosjyel 
Church, Ch. XI. Works (Eussell's ed. Lond. 1826), 
Vol. XX., pp. 569 ff.) This whole chapter, it seems to 
me, is a concession to Presbyterian principles ; and is 
conclusive only against the prelatical notions of the 
unitj^ of the church, and especially the papal. See 
the last paragraph in the chapter, in which, after dis- 
cussing the nature of the Synod at Jerusalem (Acts XV.,) 
he says, p. 601, Vol. XX., last paragraph in the Treatise, 
''Hence it will," etc., every word of which a Presby- 
terian might adopt, not exceptingthe words '' voluntarv 
consent." (See C. of. F, Ch. XXXL, § 2.) Second, in 
universal practice: As they are compelled to imitate 
Presbyterians on the scale of a single congregation (see 
Lect. on Congregational Presbyteties) : so also on the 
larger scale of districts containing many congregations, 
they have their associations, consociations, confer- 
ences, etc., Avhicli practically attempt the work of Pres- 
byteries, with the disadvantages already indicated of 
putting the power in the hands of men who have no 
official authorit}^, and are under no official responsi- 
bility. It is a painful evidence of the power of preju- 
dice that a man like Owen could lay down the princi- 



Presbyteries — Classical, Synodical, General. 191 

pies touching church power so clearly, and contend for 
the divine warrant of Synods to the extent of asserting 
that their decrees " are to be received, owned and ob- 
served, not only on the e^ddence of the mind of the 
Holy Ghost in them," but also on the ministerial au- 
thority of the Synod itself (see place above cited), and 
yet hold that they have no power of censure (judicial) 
or excommunication, and that it belongs not to the 
rulers of the church, as rulers, to be members of such 
Synods, but to private members as well, provided 
they be delegated thereunto by the people. 

'6. From Scripture. The federal character of the 
government of Israel, combining unity with the full 
development of tribal and individual life. Force of the 
words ''congregation of Israel." The wprd ''church," 
(exzh^aca) has already been noticed as equivalent, in 
LXX., to the word rendered "congregation" in ours, 
and as the term "congregation," in the Old Testament, 
denotes the whole body of the visible people of God, 
so the term " church," in the New. But here the In- 
dependents join issue with us. They deny that the 
term, when used in the singular number, and in appli- 
cation to a visible bodj^, ever denotes anything larger 
than a single congregation. It is necessary, therefore, 
to argue this point a little. I. The phrase " church" 
of or at "Jerusalem," occurs several times in the Acts. 
(See ii. 47; viii. 1 ; xi. 22; xv. 4.) II. The church of 
Jerusalem must have consisted of several congregations. 
Argued, (1), From the multitude of believers. Acts 
ii. 41, 47 ; iv. 4; v. 14; vi. 1, etc., vs. 7. These notices 
refer to the church before the dispersion, upon the 
persecution which arose after the death of Stephen ; 
and the number of believers could not have been much, 
if any, short of 10,000. After the dispersion w^e have 
notices like the following: ix. 31; xxi. 20; '^Tzoaac 
fivcfco.os^,'' "how many tens of thousands." (2), From 
the manner of meeting among the primitive Christians. 
This was not in spacious halls built for the purpose. 



192 ECCLESIOLOGY. 

but in dwelling-liouses, chambers, upper rooms, etc."^ 
Acts i. 13 ; ii. 46 ; xii. 5, with vs. 12 ; xix. 9 ; xx. 8. 
Eom., xvi. 5. [^Div. Govt^ by Lend. Ministers.) (3), 
The church is represented as one body, in the New 
Testament, ^' fitly joined together and coin2)acted by that 
which Q\eTj joint suppheth." (Eph. iv. 16.) As this is 
the church to which is given the ministry (vs. 11, etc.), 
it must be the church visible ; and it is just as natural 
to consider these ''bands" and ''joints" as designating 
the means by which different congregations are united 
in the same confederation, as it is to consider them the 
means of union to the individual members of the same 
church, particidar or single. (Killeii^ p. 250.) (4), 
This doctrine of the visible unity of the church seems 
to have been sanctioned by the practice of the apostles. 
See Acts viii. 14; xi. 22; also ch. xv., where they are 
represented as acting in concert, although, from the 
very nature of the apostolic office, each was a governor 
of the whole church. 

4. A fourth general argument may be taken from the 
Jewish synagogues. It is conceded, even by candid op- 
ponents of the Presbyterian system, "that the church 
did really derive its polity from the synagogue, and 
that it is a fact, upon the proof of which, in the pre- 
sent state of theological learning, it is needless to ex- 
pend many w^ords" (see Litton s Church of Christy 
cited by Killen, p. 251) ; and this accounts for the fact 
that in the New Testament there is no formal state- 
ment in regard to the constitution of the Christian 
church, just as there is no formal explanation of the 
meaning of the word Christ or Messiah. Killen gives, 
out of standard authors (Selden, Lightfoot, etc.), the 
following account of the government of the synagogue, 
(p. 251 et secj.) : Every Jewish congregation was gov- 

* This view is conlirmed by the well known fact that the synagogues 
were generally not large. It is said (See Pndeaux) that there were 480 
of them in Jerusalem in the Saviour's time, and yet the population of 
the city was probably not more than 150,000 at the outside, giving an 
average of one synagogue to a little more than 300 people. 



Presbyteries — Classical, Synodical, General. 193 

eriied by a bench of elders ; and in every city there was 
a small sanhedrin or presbytery, consisting of twenty- 
three members, to which the neighboring synagogues 
were subject. Jerusalem is said to have had two of these 
small sanhedrins, as it was found that the multitude 
of cases arising among so vast a population were more 
than sufficient to occupy the time of any one judicatory. 
Appeals lay from all these tribunals to the great sanhe- 
drin, or '' council," so frequently mentioned in the New 
Testament. (Luke xxii. 66; Acts v. 21; vi. 15; Pri- 
decmxs (Jon., Part II., Book 7.) This court consisted of 
seventy or seventy-two members, made up, perhaps, in 
equal portions, of chief-priests, scribes, and elders of 
the people. (Matt. xvi. 21 ; xxvi. 59 ; Mark, xv. 1.) 
The chief-priests were probably 24 in number — each 
of the 24 courses into which the sacerdotal order was 
divided (1 Chron. xxiv. 4 ; vii. 18), thus furnishing one 
representative. The scribes were the men of learning, 
like Gamaliel (Acts v. 34), who had devoted themselves 
to the study of the Jewish law, and who possessed 
recondite as well as extensive information. The elders 
were laymen (?) of reputed wisdom and experience, 
who, in practical matters, might be expected to give 
sound advice. . . . Our Lord himself, in the 
Sermon on the Mount, is understood to refer to the 
great council and its subordinate judicatures (Matt. v. 
22 ); and in the Old Testament, appeals from inferior 
tribunals to the authorities in the holy city are ex- 
plicitly enjoined. (Deut. xvii. 8-10; 2 Chron. xix. 8- 
11; Psalms, cxxii. 5.) All the synagogues, not only 
in Palestine, but in foreign countries, obeyed the or- 
ders of the sanhedrin at Jerusalem, and it constituted 
a court of review to which all other ecclesiastical arbit- 
ers yielded submission. (See also Miller on R%iling 
Eldtrs, Ch. II., p. 31, et seq.) 

These principles and facts undoubtedly explain and 
harmonize all the notices of the New Testament in re- 
gard to elders, and the organization of the church, 



194 ECCLESIOLOGY. 

better than the theories of Independents or prelatists, 
although it may be conceded that absolute certainty 
cannot be reached upon these points as it can be in 
regard to those articles of faitli which are fundamental 
and necessary to salvation. And, hence, while w^e 
contend for the scriptural order of Christ's house, as a 
matter of faith and of vast importance to the prosperity 
and efficiency of the church, w^e do not unchurch and 
remit to the uncovenanted mercies of God those who, 
holding the head, yet differ from us upon these points. 

We have thus reached, in the course of our inqui- 
ries, a third distinctive feature of Presbyterian church 
government — the mode in wdiich it realizes the unity 
of the church. It realizes this idea by the elastictity of 
its parliamentary representative system. If there w^as 
but one congregation on earth, its presbytery or '' ses- 
sion," would constitute the parliament of the whole 
church ; if half-a-dozen, the representatives from each 
would constitute a parliament for thewdiole church; if 
a still larger number, the same results would follow. 
And representatives from all the churches (or from 
the smaller parliaments, wdiich is the same principle,) 
constitute the parliament for the whole church. Only 
two churches on the earth realize this idea of church 
unity — Rome and our own church. But these are the 
poles apart as to the system by which they realize it. 
Kome, wdth her infallible pope at the head, and with 
graded authorities extending over the whole earth, one 
class subservient to another and all to the pope, se- 
cures a terrible unity, binding all, abjectly, to a single 
throne. Our system, on the other hand, secures unity 
in consistency' with the most perfect freedom. Presby- 
terianism, may, therefore, be thus defined : The gov- 
ernment of the church by parliamentary assemblies, 
composed of two classes of presbj'ters, and of presby- 
ters only, and so arranged as to realize the visible 
unity of the Avhole church. ( Thornwell, Yol. IV., p. 267.) 

II. In the light of these principles we recognize the 



Peesbyteries — Classical, Synodical, General. 195 

truth of the statement of the fundamental principles 
of Presbyterianism contained in the note to Form of 
Gov., B. 1, Ch. XII., in the old book. If all the com- 
municants in the Presbyterian Church of the United 
States could meet for worship in the same place, they 
might and should be under the government of the 
same session; but as this is impossible, they are 
broken up into single congregations, each with its own 
session. But in order to preserve the unity, all these 
single or local presbyteries are ultimately combined 
by representation in one presbytery, which we call 
the General Assembly, passing through the inter- 
mediate stages of classical and synodical presbyteries. 
Of this General Assembly we might say, in the lan- 
guage of Milton (Reason of Chiircli Govermnent against 
Prelaty, Ch. VI.), ^' every parochial consistory is a 
right homogeneous and constituting part, being in 
itself a little synod, and towards a general assembly 
moving upon her own basis in an even and firm pro- 
gression, as those smaller squares in battle unite in 
one great cube, the main phalanx, an emblem of truth 
and steadfastness." It is not one order of clergy 
rising above another, like the gradations in the Roman 
hierarchy, but a larger square of the same order of 
presbyters, including a smaller, until the ''great cube" 
is reached. The subordination is not that of inferior 
officers to superior ; but of a smaller body to a larger 
body of officers of the same order — the smaller con- 
stituting a part of the larger. Now in regard to this 
series of courts it is important to observe: 1, As has 
already been noted, it is a matter of conventional 
arrangement, founded upon expediency, how many 
and how large these courts shall be, how often they 
'shall meet, how they shall be constituted; that is, of 
what number of elders and how many of each class, 
how many shall constitute a quorum, etc. 2, That 
as appellate jurisdiction must belong to the courts 
above the sessions, or congregatioiial presbytery, it is 



196 ECCLESIOLOGY. 

also a matter of convention or of constitutional arrange- 
ment liow this appellate jurisdiction shall be distributed 
and regulated; subject of course to the principle of a 
larger reviewing the doings of the smaller part, and 
consequently of the highest appellate jurisdiction be- 
longing to the highest court which is allowed 'ap^Del- 
late jurisdiction at all. 3, That in matters of original 
jurisdiction everj^ court has, prior to any constitutional 
distribution of power, all the power that any court has. 
The presbytery does not derive its powers from the 
session, nor the synod from the presbytery, nor the 
general assembly from synods or presbyteries in an 
ascending scale, nor the synod from the general as- 
sembly, etc., in a descending scale. But as every 
court is a presbytery composed of presbj^ters of two 
classes, it is clothed Avith all the powers of government. 
So that a session might ordain and send out mission- 
aries, and the general assemby might examine and re- 
ceive members into the communion of the church, if 
these powers had not been distributed in the constitu- 
tion. The sphere of the several courts, therefore, in 
matters of original jurisdiction is not determined by 
the places thej occupy in the scale, but by the defini- 
tions of the constitution. This is an important princi- 
ple to the freedom and independence of the courts. 

The dictum by which the unity of the church, the 
power of the parts, and the power of the whole over 
the particular parts, are expressed is as follows: ^'The 
power of the whole is in every part, and the power of 
the whole is over the poicer of every part." The power 
of the Presbyterian Church of the United States is in 
the general assembly, the sjmod, the presbytery, the 
session, and the power of the general assembly is over 
the power of the synod, presbytery and session. This 
last expression is intended to preserve the rights and 
powers belonging to the lower courts (guaranteed by 
the constitution). The general assembly has no power 
directly ove?' the pa7''t, but only over the po^ver of the 



The Deacon's Office. 197 

part, whicli implies that the part has a power. Com- 
pare the civil commonwealth. The Commonwealth of 
Virginia appears in all its parts or courts as a party 
lind judge in every criminal cause, and as a judge only 
in every civil suit. This fact is the ground of the pro- 
visions for appeals, complaints (bills of exceptions), 
references (change of venue), etc. See the action of 
Assembly, 1879, on the overture of Atlanta Presbytery 
on worldly amusements (answer to third question). 

XIX. 

The Deacon's Office. 

The communion of saints is implied in the very no- 
tion of an organized church having its polity and its 
ordinances of worship. But this communion (xor^co'^ca) 
is most impressively exhibited in two ordinances, both 
of which are emphatically denominated by the word 
co7nmu7iio?2, to wit: the Lord's supper and contribu- 
tions in money, or its equivalent. (Acts ii. 42-45 ; 1 
Cor. X. 16 ; 2 Cor. viii. 4; Heb. xiii. 16; Eom. xv. 26, 
27.) Both of these belong to the worship of God. 
No definition of worship can be framed which can 
be justly applied to the Lord's supper, that will not 
apply also to these contributions. There is no more 
glorious act of worship described in the Bible than that 
in the last chapter of the First Book of the Chronicles. 

This view of contributions accounts for the import- 
ance ascribed to them in both Testaments. They are 
the tokens, and, in some respects, the most unexcep- 
tionable tokens of the reality of the communion of 
saints. Considering the power of the feeling of ^jume, 
who can read that the primitive Christians were not 
accustomed to say, ''that aught of the things which 
they possessed was their own," but that ''they had all 
things common," can doubt that a new principle was 
at work in their hearts, a principle not earth-born, but 
descended from heaven. Still more manifest did this 



198 ECCLESIOLOGY. ' 

become when the Gentile Christians contributed to the 
relief of their Jewish brethren. Here there was no 
bond of blood to prompt the beneficence; rather was 
there the bitter prejudice of race. No wonder that the 
great apostle was willing to travel all the way to Jeru- 
salem to seal the gift to the recipients; that is, to ex- 
pound its comprehensive spiritual meaning, and to im- 
press upon their hearts the reality and the glory of 
the communion of saints. (Acts xi. 29, 30 ; Kom. xv. 
25-28 ; 1 Cor. xvi. 1-4 ; 2 Cor. chaps, viii. ix.) 

It was in this form, "in relieving each other in out- 
ward things according to their several abilities and 
necessities^" {Con, of Faith, Ch. XXVI., Art. 2.), that the 
communion of saints was first and most conspicuously 
exhibited in the primitive church ; and it was in con- 
nection with this form that the deacons first appeared, 
(Acts vi. 1-6.) They were the deacons of ''tables," as 
the apostles were deacons of ''the word." The saints 
had communion with each other in the apostles' teach- 
ing and in breaking of bread and in prayers (Acts ii. 
42) ; but they had also communion with each other in 
'' outward things "; and this form of communion is that 
which the narrative enlarges upon in the succeeding 
verses (44, 45), and reverts to in ch. iv. 32-37. The 
prime aspect, then, of the office of deacon is that of a 
representative of the communion of saints. The word 
may be and is preached where there are no saints, and 
therefore no communion; it is conceivable also that 
ruling elders may exercise their authority in a dead 
church ; but deacons have nothing to do, except in a 
church which has life enough to show itself in a min- 
istry to the saints. 

This circumstance demonstrates the dionitv and 
spirituality of the deacon's office. Albeit concerned 
mainly with " outward things," it is with the outward 
things of a spiritual body that the office is concerned, 
and spiritual qualifications are indispensable to a right 
administration of them. Hence we find Paul, in pre- 



The Deacon's Office. 199 

scribing the qualifications of cliurcli officers in tlie third 
chapter of his First Epistle to Timothy, saying as much 
of those of the deacon as of those of the elder, if not 
more. It is not a little remarkable that a deacon 
should haye been chosen rather than an apostle to see 
that it was God's plan to abolish the Mosaic form of 
the true religion, and to establish one which should be 
spiritual and uniyersal. The celebrated saying of 
Augustine, "If Stephen had not prayed, we should not 
have had Paul," was perhaps more comprehensive in 
its scope than the great thinker supposed. The prayer 
of the dying martyr was perhaps the means, not only 
of the conyersion of Saul of Tarsus, but of bringing 
him upon the scene as Paul the apostle of the Gentiles, 
Certain it is that the charges against Paul, by which 
the Jews thought themselyes justified in seeking to kill 
him, were the yery same as those which led to the mur- 
der of Stephen. (Compare Acts yi. 11-14 with xxi. 
28 ; xxy. 8.) It is also not a little remarkable that 
while the account of the death of James, the brother 
of John, one of the three apostles who were admitted 
to special intimacy with the Lord, is dispatched in one 
short sentence (See Acts xii. 2), the account of the 
deacon's death is giyen in detail. A dozen yerses 
would embrace all that is said of James in the New 
Testament; two chapters, one of them long, are occu- 
pied with Stephen, the deacon ; and eyery reader of 
church history knows what a prominent part deacons 
haye played in it. It is not a small office. Paul prob- 
ably had Stephen in his mind when lie wrote the sen- 
tence (1 Tim. iii. 13), ''They that haye seryed well 
as deacons gain to themselyes a good standing and 
great boldness in the faith which is in Christ Jesus." 
But the sam ^ may be true now, if deacons will take the 
pains to umierstand their office, and seek grace from 
God to perform its duties and to improve its privileges. 
That special condition of the early church, in Jerusa- 
lem which gave occasion to the appointment of 



o 



200 ECCLESIOLOGY. 

deacons was temporary and local, and was designed to 
be so. We know not liow long it lasted, probably not 
long. It is easy to see that a permanent condition of 
that sort would have resulted in many and great evils, 
unless prevented by a continued miracle, and there is 
no trace of such a condition in any of the Gentile 
churches. Nevertheless, '' the poor were not to cease 
out of the land " ; they were to have the gospel preached 
unto them ; and to the end of time the ministry to the 
necessities of the saints should continue to be needful. 
The office of deacon was therefore intended to be per- 
petual. 

But it would be taking too narrow a view of the 
office to confine its exercise to this kind of ministry. 
The communion of saints ''in outward things" is more 
extensive than can be adequately exhibited by the re- 
lief of the poor in a single congregation or in a single 
city. A single congregation, or all the congregations 
united in a single city, is not the church universal, or 
even the church of one state or countrj'. The commu- 
nion, therefore, ''is to be extended as our Confession 
says, (Ch. XXVL, Art. 2) "unto all those in every place 
who call upon the name of the Lord Jesus." The rule 
holds still, that "by an equality the abundance of one 
part should be a supply for the want of another part." 
(2 Cor. viii, 14.) " Our committees of Home Missions 
and Education are but great central deaconships of 
charitable ministrations, by which in these things the 
burdens of the church may be equalized ; the richer 
provided with the means of helping the poorer, and 
the unity and union of the church at once manifested 
and strengthened. And it is but a slight variation of 
the same principle that is developed in the work of 
Foreign Missions, in which the church unites in sup- 
porting her sons and daughters whom she has sent forth 
to the nations, and in sustaining and enlarging the 
feeble churches established amid the wild wastes of 
heathenism." (See Dr. Ramsay's Essay on the Deacon- 
ship^ p. 20.) 



The Deacon's Office. 201 

''To the deacons also may be properly committed," 
says our Forin of Government (Cli. lY., Art. 2), '' the 
management of the temporal affairs of the church." 
The chnrch, like the individual Christian, has its ''tem- 
poral affairs." This phrase denotes specially the j)ro- 
perty of the congregation, the house in which it stat- 
edly worships and the ground upon which it stands, as 
well as the expenses necessarily attendant upon the 
^mfortable use of it. ''' 

This brings up the question concerning the relation 
of the deacons to the trustees of the property — a rela- 
tion which in many congregations, especially in the 
cities, is far from being satisfactorily settled. In some 
congregations, the trustees are allowed to determine 
the salary of the pastor, for the reason that the salary 
comes from the rent of the pews, and the pews be- 
long to the house. If this inequitable method of rais- 
ing the salary were abandoned, as it ought to be, 
there would be no plausible pretext left for the usurpa- 
tion of the trustees. The officers who represent the 
property, it is argued, ought to regulate the disposal 
of the proceeds thereof. Now, when it is considered 
that these trustees are often not professing Christians, 
but men of the world, chosen because they are monied 
men and men of business, and sometimes because they 
have property in the neighborhood of the church 
l)uilding whose market value will be affected by the 
character of the vicinage, it needs no argnment to 
prove that the trustees are not the persons who are 
most likely to seek the spiritual editication of the 
diurch in the choice of a pastor. Others propose to 
remedy or prevent this odious form of "patronage" 
by having the deacons incorporated as trustees. But 
the obvious objections to this scheme are, (T), That 
such trustees would have no more right to usurp, 
though there might be less temptation to usurp, the 

*For the Scotch doctrine, see Bair(Vs Digest, pp. 38, 39. 



202 ECCLESIOLOGY. 

prerogative of the congregation as to the pastor's 
salary, than the trustees of the other sort; (2), That it 
would be contrary to the American theory of the rela- 
tions of church and state to make ecclesiastical officers, 
as such, officers of the state. "^ The trustees, in the 
eye of the law, are not representatives of the church as 
such, but of a body of citizens who have a right to 
claim from the civil authority protection for their pro- 
perty. But deacons are ecclesiastical officers, and rep- 
resent the church. The remedy of the evil is to be 
found in the principle that trustees of church property 
are intended to act only m cases of the purchase or 
sale of property, or of invasion of right, when litigation 
before the court becomes necessary. This is tlje prin- 
ciple acted upon almost invariably in the country 
congregations of the South. It is doubtful in most of 
such congregations if the trustees are known at all, or 
could be found in an emergency, or whether, in conse- 
quence of omission to fill vacancies, the board has not 
entireh^ expired. 

That it is the official duty of the deacons to take 
charge of the pastor's salary would probably not have 
l^een questioned, if the salary had not been regarded as 
a pure allfair of business, and not in any just sense as 
an expression of the communion of saints. In point 
of fact, it partakes of the nature of both ; and this 
is enough to justify our church in inserting the article 
upon which the foregoing comments have been made, 
and to refute the notion that the pastor's salary is an 
affair of the civil officers called trustees. According 
to our constitution, the body tliat calls the pastor is 
the body that fixes the salary, and that body is the 
body of communicants. (See Form of Goi'trament^ 

*Jt cannot be denied, however, that our American theory is not con- 
sistently carried out. In Virginia, for example, whose traditions have 
been more decided and operative than perhaps those of any other state 
against the mingling of the two jurisdictions, a minister of the gospel 
is ex officio an officer of the state in the matter of celebrating a mar- 
riage. 



The Deacon's Office. 203 

Cb. VI, Sec. 3, Arts. 4 and 6.) The deacon, there- 
fore, is the proper officer to take charge of the pas- 
tor's salary, and the trustees as such have nothing to 
do with it. 

Another question to which importance has l)een 
given hj discussions in the church is concerning the 
relation of the deacon to the sessio]i. How far is the 
deacon responsible to the session in the performance of 
his official duties? It is, of course, conceded on all 
hands that in the case of criminal conduct he is re- 
sponsible to the session— the court to which, accord- 
ing to the constitution, all original jurisdiction, except 
in the trial of ministers, belongs. It must be con- 
ceded also, that money contributed for a specific pur- 
pose, say Home or Foreign Missions, cannot, in good 
faith, be diverted from that purpose, b}^ either ses- 
sion or deacons, Avithout the consent of the contribu- 
tors. In reference to all other funds, it would seem 
that they are under the direction and control of the 
session. The public purse must be under the control 
of the government. In free civil commonwealths, the 
government is distributed into different branches ; and 
the power of the purse, for ol)vious reasons, is lodged 
with that branch Avliich more immediately represents 
the people from whom the money is derived by taxa- 
tion. But it belongs to the government. So in the 
church. The government is not, indeed, distributed 
into branches as it is in the state, neither is there any 
taxation ; but the rulers are the representatives of the 
people as chosen by them, and the people consent that 
their voluntary offerings shall be controlled by them. 
To give the deacons, who are not rulers, power to dis- 
pose of the revenues as against the elders, would be 
virtually to create an J'/j}jjeru/?/i hi hj}j)eno ; for the 
power goes wdth the purse. Hence we find the con- 
tributions of the primitive church laid "at the feet of 
the apostles." (Acts iv. 35, 37 ; v. 2.) It is in ac- 
cordance with this view that our Form of Government 



204 ErCLERIOLOGY. 

provides (Cli. lY., Sec. 4, Art. 4), that "a complete 
account of collections and distributions, and a full 
record of proceedings, shall be kept by the deacons, 
and submitted to the session for examination and ap- 
proval at least once a year." 

Another question which has l)een debated in our 
church concerns the relation of the deacon to the 
courts above the session. Is he exclusively a congre- 
gational ojBBcer? Or, maj^he be employed also by the 
presbytery, the synod, and the general assembly? Is 
there anything, either in the nature of the of- 
fice or its relation to the congregation, to forbid the 
management by it of the Foreign Missionary or any 
other of the schemes of the Assembly ? If not, why 
not commit such of these schemes to a board of dea- 
cons, and set free the ministers of the word for their 
high calling ? Did not the apostles insist upon the 
appointment of deacons "to serve tables," in order that 
they might give themselves to the ''serAdce of the 
word"? The answer to these questions may be given 
in a series of propositions : 

1. It is plain that the original deacons were not con- 
fined in their ministrations to a single congregation 
(Acts vi.), unless we suppose with the Independents 
that there was l:>ut one congregation in Jerusalem. 

2. If a deacon may extend his ministrations bej^ond 
the bounds of his own congregation, the principle is set- 
tled, and it becomes a question merely of expediency 
how many congregations may be embraced within their 
scope. Their scope ma}^ embrace all the congrega- 
tions represented by a general assembly. 

3. There may be cases in which the collection and 
disbursement of the people's offerings demand, for 
their full effect, the accompaniment of instruction 
which can be best i>iven only bv ministers of the 
word. In such cases ministers may be associated 
with, or even take the place of, deacons. Instances of 
this sort we find in iVcts i. 29, 30 ; xxx. 4, compared with 



The Deacon's Office. 205 

xxiv. 17; Eom. xv. 25-28; 2 Cor. viii. 16-24; ciiid 
Paley's Harm PavUnte, Cli. II., No. 3. Paul seems to 
have attached so much importance to the contributions 
mentioned in these passages as to justify his leaving 
his work among the Gentiles and his taking laborious 
journeys to Jerusalem, in order to expound their spir- 
itual significance and to seal to the recipients the pre- 
cious fruit. How far these principles apply to any or 
all of the Assembly's schemes, it is for the wisdom of 
the churcli to decide ; but it is the author's conviction 
that the tendency is now to excess in the employment 
of ministers of the word, and to a return to plans which 
the churcli, many years ago, formally repudiated as 
wrong in princij^le and injurious in results. 

Touching the qualifications for the deacon's office, 
two places of Scripture may be compared : Acts vi. 3, 5 ; 
1 Tim. iii. 8, 9. The differences here may be ex- 
plained by the difference between a temporary condi- 
tion of the church, in which gifts of the Spirit were 
prodigally and generally bestowed, and a condition of 
the church designed to be permanent, in which gifts 
are conferred with a more sparing hand. The 
proportion between the gifts generally bestowed and 
the special gifts for the exercise of office is in l)oth con- 
ditions about the same. The rule for the guidance of 
the church in all time is, no doubt, that given in the 
third chapter of the First Epistle to Timothy. 



^Hoo 



